•Says they are the faces behind sect
THE Ijaw National Congress (INC) has hit back at some Northern leaders, accusing them of being the brains behind the recent upsurge in the activities of the Boko Haram sect in the North-Eastern part of the country.
This was in reaction to series of allegations lately by some prominent leaders from the North, who said the Presidency and the people of the South-South – especially the Ijaws – were the masterminds of the insurgency.
Governor Murtala Nyako of Adamawa State had, while speaking at a three-day symposium on Current Economic, Social and Security Challenges Facing Northern Nigeria, held recently in Washington DC, United Statets of America, alleged that most of the mind-boggling money missing from the nation’s coffers were being used to finance the activities of the Boko Haram sect.
He had also accused the Presidency of complicity in the insurgency, declaring, “Let’s face it: neither the Federal Government nor the Nigerian military has ever linked those few persons paraded as Boko Haram suspects with any of their strategic commanders or sponsors!
“The locations of Boko Haram camps such as those at Sambisa Games Reserve, which are said to be well established and well stocked, are known by all traditional defence and security units in the North-East; but we hear about them from the authorities only on selective basis.”
In the same vein, the Islamic leader, Sheikh Ahmad Gumi, was said to have declared that the lives and security of millions of Nigerians, except those of the Niger-Deltans, were in serious danger under the President Goodluck Jonathan administration.
Demanding for a process of the impeachment of the president over an alleged $20 billion allegedly unaccounted for by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Gumi said it was only logical that the missing billions of dollars were the source of finance for the Boko Haram insurgency.
“For one, it may explain the source of finance for the Boko Haram insurgency that is using weapons more expensive and sophisticated than the ones used by our national armed forces. And true to the president’s assertion previously that there are Boko Haram sponsors in his cabinet, it is only logical that their only source of finance should be the missing billions of dollars,” he said.
He had also said Jonathan should not be allowed to rule the country beyond 2015 because “the president, being an Ijaw man and a Niger Deltan, can no longer be trusted with our lives – we the other Nigerians, because to the many Niger Deltans, if he is allowed to continue to 2015, for them will be a win-win situation. He either tries to undemocratically suppress the nation for a second term or recklessly destroy the nation, the purport of OBJ’s warning to the nation.”
However, the INC, reacting through its National Publicity Secretary, Mr Victor Borupo, dismissed the allegations, saying the Northern leaders should rather own up to the fact that the Boko Haram they created had metamorphosed into a monster and was no longer under their control.
Speaking in an interview with Saturday Tribune in Port Harcourt, Borupo said it was mischievous for anybody to claim that Ijaw people were behind the insurgency, adding that the Northern leaders created Boko Haram with the initial intention to “harass, intimidate and frighten President Goodluck Jonathan.”
He said unlike the defunct militancy in the Niger Delta which, according to him, came into existence to fight some marginalisation of the Niger Deltans, some prominent Northern leaders formed Boko Haram as a way of taking back power from President Jonathan.
“Back there in the North, we know of some northern leaders who argued that the only way they could take back power from Jonathan was to make Nigeria ungovernable for him, so to speak. They felt that if they too started a form of agitation and created some trouble in the country, Jonathan would be forced to hand back power to them, and so all these things started.
“The truth right now is that the Boko Haram issue, which they thought they could control, had spiraled out of their control, just as the control of the youth spiraled out of the control of the politicians in the Niger Delta. The Northern elders have lost control of what they started. It is not anything to do with the Ijaw people.
