‘Boko Haram Sponsors’: Why Stephen Davis Should Not Be Trusted

The most trending story in Nigeria today is about one Australian ‘international negotiator’ allegedly recruited by Nigerian government to facilitate the release of the abducted Chibok Schoolgirls, Dr Stephen Davis who came up with ‘earth shaking’ revelations about the sponsors of Boko Haram. This Davis who is yet to tell the world whether he has submitted his report to Nigerian government or not, conveniently ‘submitted’ the same report to ABC News, Arise TV, Thisday and Sahara Reporters in that order.

According to this ‘highly reputed’ international negotiator he has uncovered the sponsors of Boko Haram that have been slaughtering thousands of innocent Nigerians since 2009. And the sponsors according to him are former chief of army staff, General Azubuike Ihejirika and former governor of Borno State, Senator Alimodu Sheriff. He also revealed that the Boko Haram money could not be traced because it is funded through Central Bank of Nigeria(CBN) where former CBN official and one other presently at the top bank who wire the money to Cairo where a Boko Haram ‘money bag’ use it to buy weapons and send to the group’s base at the north east. Davis also claimed that the other major financiers of Boko Haram are in the opposition and that if President Jonathan is to arrest them over their complicity he would be accused of planning to rig 2015 elections.

Why you will know that Davis and some of his friends in Nigeria are up to some mischief would be unravelled immediately. Watch this. While it takes the Americans all manners of interrogations including torture techniques like waterboarding to extract the minute of information from captured Al-Quede fighters, Boko Haram commanders that Davis met in their ‘base’ in Borno where he went to negotiate the release of Chibok girls welcomed him with open arms and freely without anything to gain told him that their sponsors are Ihejirika and Sheriff. And Davis believed Boko Haram commanders. Nigeria’s major opposition party, APC for which Sheriff was a founding member till about three weeks ago believed the Boko Haram commanders’ account too and has been fouling the atmosphere ever since. It is surprising how people you otherwise think are intelligent would believe or even take interest on a negotiator who believed that a jihadist group like Boko Haram determined to establish a Caliphate in place of Nigeria would tell an ‘infidel’ from Australia their real sponsors. It means they are no longer interested in fighting insurgency, or their dream Sharia governed Caliphate. Nothing could be further from the truth.

While Davis was ‘courageous’ in outing Ihejirika and Sheriff as sponsors of Boko Haram, his courage failed him when he was asked to name the CBN officials who wire money to Cairo or the opposition leaders sponsoring Boko Haram whom he said if Jonathan arrest them he(Jonathan) would be accused of planning to rig 2015 elections. Davis cowardly said that if he name the CBN officials and opposition leaders it would jeopardise investigations. How considerate? Ihejirika and Sheriff both have access to Jonathan and you are telling me that such access will not jeopardise investigation, while exposing opposition leaders and CBN officials will? From the foregoing you could see that Davis assignment was allegedly to identify enemies of Boko Haram as sponsors while attentions are taken away from the real sponsors.

Ihejirika is one army chief who routed the Boko Haram so much so that even the Northern Elders Forum protested the ways that they are being killed instead of being given amnesty as the Niger Delta militants and swore that they are going to take Ihejirika to the ICC in the Hague. How could Ihejirika be killing them at the same time sponsoring them? So illogical! Yet some ‘intelligent’ people are saying arrest Ihejirika. So Ihejirika, a staunch Christian would want to be governed by Sharia and live under the Caliphate that Boko Haram wants to establish?

In the case of Sheriff, he was the governor of Borno State when the group in 2009 started their killing campaign for which the governor banned the organisation. The group took on arms and they were confronted by the military for five days on the streets of Borno and when the dust had settled several members of Boko Haram died and their leader Mohammed Yusuf arrested by the army and handed over to the police. Unfortunately Yusuf died under the custody of the police. Since the death of Yusuf in 2009, Boko Haram passed a fatwa on Sheriff and has been their number one enemy, marked down for elimination. Sheriff’s family members and political associates have been killed by the group. How can he be sponsoring them and they are killing his family members? What manner of sponsorship is this?

I can understand the desperation of APC to extricate itself from its Janjaweed toga as 2015 election is fast approaching even as a member of the British parliament is alleging that the APC  is the political arm of Boko Haram for which the parliamentarian demanded investigation by the British government. That desperation should not becloud their reasoning to the extent that Boko Haram commanders have become do-gooders who will truly tell their real sponsors while they are busy taking territories in Borno State.