The controversy over alleged sponsors of Boko
Haram took a twist yesterday when Nobel Laureate
Wole Soyinka said information about a suspected
financier of the terror group within the Central Bank
of Nigeria (CBN) was passed to President Goodluck
Jonathan.
Soyinka also said he worked “in the background” with
Australian negotiator Stephen Davis during the Niger
Delta militancy crisis, and warned against dismissing
his claims on those allegedly sponsoring Boko Haram.
The Nobel Laureate spoke on a day a source familiar
with Boko Haram revealed that some of the school
girls captured by the Islamist group in Chibok, Borno
State, in April, might have been raped to death.
In a statement by Soyinka titled, The wages of
impunity, he was appalled by government’s
treatment of people linked with the Islamist group
with kid gloves.
Soyinka said: “Finally, Stephen Davis also mentioned
a Boko Haram financier within the Nigerian Central
Bank. Independently we are able to give backing to
that claim, even to the extent of naming the
individual. In the process of our enquiries, we
solicited the help of a foreign embassy whose
government, we learnt, was actually on the same
trail, thanks to its independent investigation into
some money laundering that involved the Central
Bank.
“That name, we confidently learnt, has also been
passed on to President Jonathan. When he is ready to
abandon his accommodating policy towards the
implicated, even the criminalized, an attitude that
owes so much to re-election desperation, when he
moves from a passive `letting the law to take its
course’ to galvanizing the law to take its course, we
shall gladly supply that name”.
Routine raping?
Meanwhile, a source involved in efforts to free the
abducted Chibok girls told Sunday Vanguard, in an
exclusive interview, yesterday, that some of the
victims, who could not withstand routine raping by
the terrorists, passed on in the early days of their
capture.
The source explained that it was unfortunate that
many of the girls would never be reunited with their
parents and loved ones because they were no more,
contrary to the belief that they were being held up in
Sambisa Forest.
He said that the insurgents had also taken more boys
and girls than was being estimated, saying that most
of the captives were seized unannounced by the
terrorists.
The source, a negotiator, said that contrary to the
claim in some quarters that President Jonathan had
not done enough to secure the release of the
surviving girls, it was actually Nigerians who were
frustrating the release of the girls.
The source accused some Nigerian middlemen, who
were using their proximity to some of the insurgents,
to trade with government over the release of the
girls.
According to the source, many of the negotiators
were more interested in making quick gains from
government than seeing to the freedom of the
children.
“Throughout our effort to free the girls, many of the
middlemen were simply playing games for their
pecuniary interests. They would come now and tell
you that they have some of the girls and, when you
fix a date and time for them, they would never show
up again,” the negotiator revealed.
“The main problem in the rescue effort is that most
of the middlemen involved are not sincere and are
just looking for money.
“What is happening to the girls is painful because
efforts to get them out have not yielded any positive
result five months after they were abducted by their
captors.
“As a father, I really feel bad about the children and
their parents but we still hope that those who are
still alive would eventually be freed, no matter their
health conditions and reunited with their parents.”
Read Soyinka’s statement titled
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