A Perth-based international adviser, Dr. Stephen Davis,
who survived months of extreme danger to try to rescue
more than 200 schoolgirls kidnapped by terrorist group
Boko Haram, has revealed that one of the primary
sources of funding for the terror group is Nigerian
politicians.
Davis has worked in Nigeria in the past with the
Archbishop of Canterbury and Head of the Church of
England, Justin Welby, to negotiate the release of
kidnapped oil industry workers in the Niger Delta.
Speaking yesterday in an interview on ABC News, an
Australian television station, Davis, 63, said he had
realised the only way to stop the kidnappings was to stop
the sponsors of Boko Haram.
While Al Qaeda was involved in training Boko Haram
recruits, Davis said one of their major sources of
funding – aside from raiding banks – was Nigerian
politicians.
“That makes it easier in some ways as they can be
arrested, but of course the onus of proof is high and
many are in opposition, so if the president (Goodluck
Jonathan) moves against them, he would be accused of
trying to rig the elections due early next year,” he said.
“So I think this will run through to the election
unabated. These politicians think that if they win power
they can turn these terrorists off, but this has mutated.
“It’s no longer a case of Muslims purifying by killing off
Christians. They are just killing indiscriminately,
beheading, disemboweling people – men, women and
children and whole villages.
“I would say it’s almost beyond the control of the
political sponsors now. Terror groups are linking up in
Somalia, southern Sudan, Egypt and we have fairly
strong evidence they are talking with ISIS members.
“They will link up with ISIS and Al Shabaab and I think
that what we are seeing in that region is the new
homeland of radical Islam in the world,” he told his
interviewer.
Davis, who returned to Australia after a four-month
sojourn with rare footage of the intense fighting in
Nigeria’s North-east, as Boko Haram stepped up efforts
to establish an Islamic state, said he established
extensive contacts with tribes and terrorist groups in
Africa, including three small cells of Al Qaeda, while
working as a troubleshooter for oil and gas company Shell
in the Niger Delta.
When news broke in April about the girls’ kidnapping from
a school in the village of Chibok, near the Cameroun
border, Davis, who had recently moved to Perth from
London, decided he could not sit on his hands.
During the journey in North-eastern Nigeria, his life was
threatened more than once, but his Australian passport
saved him.
“When confronted by groups with an AK-47 in my face
they’d say, ‘you are American, we have to kill you’,”
Davis said.
“When you say, no I’m not American, they think you are
British, and say you will still die, but when I said I’m
Australian, they said that’s all right. I have no idea why
but it’s certainly been helpful.”
The devout Christian managed to smuggle out of the
country footage of a handful of schoolgirls who escaped
from Boko Haram.
They detail the atrocities they endured, including being
raped almost on a daily basis.” Following media reports
that nobody knew where the girls were, he decided to
reach out to his contacts.
“I made a few phone calls to the Boko Haram commanders
and they confirmed they were in possession of the girls,”
he said. They told me they’d be prepared to release some
as a goodwill gesture towards a peace deal with the
government, so I went to Nigeria on the basis of being
able to secure their release.”
Arriving in Nigeria, Davis quickly set up talks with
commanders and he believed he had brokered a deal.
Fearing being arrested, the Boko Haram commanders –
holding the girls across the border in Cameroun – had a
list of conditions.
They wanted the military to stand down and promised to
drop the girls in a village before phoning to give their
exact location.
Davis said they lived up to their promise, but in a region
ravaged by war and corruption, the rescue was
sabotaged.
“The girls were there, 60 girls, there were 20 vehicles
with the girls,” he said.
“We travelled for four-and-a-half hours to reach them,
but 15 minutes before we arrived they were kidnapped
again by another group who wanted to cash in on a
reward. The police had offered a reward of several
million naira just 24 hours before we went to pick them
up.
“I understand, from the Boko Haram commanders I spoke
to, the girls eventually ended up back with them. I don’t
know what happened to the group that took them but I
suspect it wasn’t good,” he disclosed.
Davis said a young man kidnapped by Boko Haram and used
as a driver later helped a handful of girls to escape.
One kidnapped girl, who managed to avoid having her
mobile phone confiscated by turning it off and hiding it
in her bra, managed to call her family while hiding in
bushes, but had no idea where she was or which direction
she should be heading.
After being told to walk west by following the sunset
each evening, the four girls managed to cross the border
from Cameroun and into Nigeria before being reunited
with their families. So far they are the only girls to have
escaped from a Boko Haram camp. When Davis later tried
to contact, via text, the young man who helped them, he
received a sobering reply.
“The person you are trying to contact has gone on a
journey from which there is no return,” the reply read.
“He was an infidel.” Davis said the longer he stayed in
Nigeria the more it dawned on him the kidnappings would
not end.
“It became very clear that if I was able to get 50 girls
released, then another group would kidnap 70 or 80 more.
So by freeing 50 you were consigning 70 or 80 more to
the same fate,” he explained.
Davis said initially journalists from around the world
including CNN, the ABC and BBC flocked into the country,
but they concluded it was far too dangerous to send any
crew into the North-east of the country. He said since
then, the violence in North-east Nigeria and the threat
of foreign journalists being kidnapped and beheaded,
there has been limited coverage of the crimes being
committed by Boko Haram.
“Boko Haram used to telephone Nigerian journalists and
give them a story, but that doesn’t happen anymore,” he
said. They go straight to social media. They post their
own material and they’ve learnt to become very savvy on
social media and use it as an instrument to terrorise.”
Davis, who has a PhD in political geography, has worked
as an adviser to former President Olusegun Obasanjo and
the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua.
He also worked for Shell in Nigeria in an advisory
capacity between 2002 and 2004.

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tho calling GEJ slowpoke should wait and see what NIGERIA will be after the election. boko haram and their spornsors will have no place in my belove con3 NIGERIA.

good LORD!!!

Ohk.