IN SEARCH OF DR STEPHEN DAVIS Category: Thursday column Published on Thursday, 11 September 2014 05:00 Written by Jideofor Adibe pcjadibe@yahoo (0705 807 8841 texts only) Hits: 4571 Dr Stephen Davies, the Australian hostage negotiator, who reportedly assisted the governments of Obasanjo and the late Yaradua in their negotiations with the irate Niger Delta militants, has been making headlines recently. Dr Davies was widely reported as implicating former Chief of Army Staff Gen Azubuike Ihejirika (Rtd) and former Governor of Borno State, Ali Modu Sheriff as sponsors of Boko Haram. But contrary to earlier reports, Dr Davis has denied that he was engaged by the Jonathan administration to help in securing the release of the kidnapped Chibok girls. In an interview with Osun Defender of 8 September 2014, Dr Davis was quoted as saying: “I was not engaged by the Federal Government of Nigeria, any state government or any other party. I went to Nigeria in late April in an effort to facilitate a handover of the Chibok captives after discussing such a possibility with former commanders of JAS (Jama’atu Ahlul Sunnah Lih Da’awa wal Jihad otherwise known as JAS) and others close to Boko Haram” (Osun Defender, 7 September 2014). There are many questions that beggar answers: why did Dr Davis choose to go public with his allegations instead of passing the information to relevant security agencies? I am not sure that many people believe his explanation that he went public with the names of the alleged sponsors of Boko Haram because he hoped that by so doing, he would be bringing attention to the many other girls and boys kidnapped by Boko Haram. The other relevant question is how reliable the information Dr Davis claimed he was given by leaders of Boko Haram are? Could they possibly be deliberately feeding him false information perhaps to get back at people they perceive as their enemies? Could the information he claimed they fed him possibly be a decoy – given that in his role as negotiator with Boko Haram, Dr Davis was a sort of double agent? It is sometimes difficult to know when one side is using a double agent to feed deliberate falsehood. During World War II for example, the Allied powers crafted a web of deceptions to the Germans through their double agents in Britain who were most trusted and relied upon for strategic warning by the Germans. One of those agents, the Spaniard, Juan Pujol Garcia, code-named ‘Garbo,’ had impressed his German intelligence superiors with the accuracy of his reports on Britain. Knowing how much the Germans trusted information from Garbo, they used him to pass the misinformation directly to Adolf Hitler that the Allied attack on Normandy was just a diversion. And that decoy proved to be Germany’s undoing. Dr Davis’ allegation, whatever his motive, appears to have added salt to the boiling pot of our problems. For a long time, prevailing conspiracy theories made the mobilization of collective anger against the sect rather difficult. And just when people are coming to the realization that Boko Haram presents a common challenge to all Nigerians, came Dr Davis’ ‘revelations’. True, the hasty manner the DSS spokesperson Marilyn Ogar exonerated Gen. Ihejirika from the allegation against him while indicating that they would investigate Modu Sheriff made her vulnerable to charges of ethno-religious profiling. Yet, I find it preposterous that a Christian could be the sponsor of a sect with an avowed agenda of establishing an Islamic caliphate and that the leadership of Boko Haram would willingly allow themselves to be tools in the slaughter of largely fellow Muslims. What will be General Ihejirika’s motive in sponsoring Boko Haram? I also find it difficult to believe that Modu Sheriff could be the sponsor of Boko Haram - as we know the sect today. The truth is that Boko Haram has evolved and mutated since 2009 when the group got radicalized following the killing of their leader Mohamed Yusuf in police custody. The Boko Haram of today is therefore not the same in essence and character with the Boko Haram which was declared a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the USA in November 2013. The Boko Haram that kidnapped the Chibok girls in April this year has since evolved further to a sect sophisticated enough to take on and humiliate our national army in a symmetrical battle. Since the radicalization of the sect in 2009, the allegation has always been in the public domain that Modu Sheriff was among those suspected to have groomed and used the sect members as thugs when it was under the leadership of Mohamed Yusuf. One of the stories was that when the group got ‘too big’ for him he called on the government to move against them in 2009 and that it was on his orders that the killing Mohamed Yusuf, while in police custody, was effected. If the allegation is true or if Boko Haram shares that belief, it could justify Modu Sheriff’s claim that he is one of their targets – even if he was a sponsor of an earlier version of Boko Haram. There are several examples of people who founded groups that later became victims or enemies of that organization. Sometimes an organization mutates in a form that is incompatible with the visions of the original founders. Two examples here readily come to mind: The Zikist Movement, formed in 1946, was inspired by the militant nationalism of Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe (Zik of Africa). It embraced Zik and his party, the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons as ‘our edifice of freedom’. But the movement evolved and mutated from idolizing Zik to being disenchanted by his ‘gradualist’ ways. In 1948 leaders of the Zikist Movement plotted an illegal action (without letting Zik know of it) which they hoped would result in the imprisonment of Zik. The hope of the Zikists was that Zik’s imprisonment would spur the nation to positive revolutionary action. The Zikists got so radical that Zik had to denounce them as cantankerous followers and dissociated his party, the NCNC, and himself, from their activities. The Zikist Movement in turn mutated from idolizing Zik to being his ardent critic, with their newspaper, African Echo, taking regular pot-shots at their former hero. Despite the name of the movement and its early collaboration with Zik and his party, could Zik have been held responsible for the movement’s later ‘undue radicalism’? In fact, as early as 1948, the President of the Zikist movement, Malam Habib Raji Abdallah, had declared himself to be a free citizen of Nigeria, holding no allegiance to any foreign government and bound by no law other than Nigerian native law and the law of nations. Zik and other nationalists had not even started contemplating of the idea of independence at that time. Another good example is the Nigerian Pyrates Confraternity formed in 1952 by Professor Wole Soyinka and six of his friends at the then University College Ibadan. The “Magnificent Seven”, as they called themselves, claimed that the university was populated with wealthy students associated with the colonial powers and a few poorer students striving in manner and dress to be accepted by the more advantaged students. Thus when their fellow students protested against a proposal to build a railroad across the road leading to the university on fears that easier transportation would make the university less exclusive, the Pyrates successfully ridiculed the argument as elitist. Soyinka’s Pyrates, which was modelled after such fraternities and sororities (from the Latin words frater and soror, meaning “brother” and “sister” respectively) in American universities, proved popular among students, even after the original members moved on. For almost 20 years, the Pyrates were the only confraternity on Nigerian campuses and were not known to be violent. However, as new confraternities were formed in the universities in the 1970s and 1980s, they became increasingly violent as they competed for turf. By 1990s, many confraternities in the universities largely operated as criminal gangs, or “campus cults”. The point is that even though Wole Soyinka and his friends formed the Pyrates Confraternity, it was materially different from the fraternities that had evolved into cults in our Universities. In essence just as it will be wrong to accuse Wole Soyinka of forming the Pyrates (if one has in mind what the confraternity has mutated to become), or blame Zik for the latter activities of the Zikist Movement, it will in the same vein be wrong to accuse Modu Sheriff of funding the Boko Haram of 2014, which is materially different from the Boko Haram under Mohamed Yusuf. The above is not meant to be a defence of Modu Sheriff – just to put Dr Davis’ allegations in perspective. Meanwhile as we dissipate energy on this ‘new revelation’ without making sufficient efforts to interrogate their likely veracity, what we lose sight of is that Boko Haram is fast evolving from an insurgency to a movement, capturing towns in Bornu, Adamawa and Yobe states and humiliating our army in conventional battles. Therefore what the country urgently needs now is not finger- pointing and buck-passing but a realization that there is truly fire on the mountain.
Posted on: Tue, 23 Sep 2014 13:38:12 +0000
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