President Buhari: The political and financial motivations for the Abduction of Ambazonia leaders and the negotiations with Boko Haram ⁰

Yesterday, Cameroon Concord News and the Cameroon Intelligence Report both published a news item in which the Nigeria Information Minister Lai Mohammed admitted that the Government of President Buhari was negotiating a cessation of hostilities and ceasefire with Boko Haram. This admission came in the heels of the report by Cameroon Concord News Group that the Buhari Government had paid colossal amounts of money in ransom to Boko Haram for the release of some Chibok School Girls and very recently that of the Dapchi School Girls. We of this group had in the past alleged that the links between Buhari and Boko Haram are deep rooted in their shared membership of Political Islam and that the former was indeed the god father of the later.

Following from the abduction of the President of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia, His Excellency Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and members of the Interim Government  on the orders of President Buhari in one of the most scandalous corruption deals in sub-regional history,  Cameroon Concord News Group wondered where the moral compass placed President Buhari in his presumptuous lamentation over the abduction of the Dapchi School Girls which by every indication was arranged to occur by him to fulfill carefully calculated political goals.  Cameroon Concord News alerted its readers that payments to Boko Haram whose leaders President Buhari and his entourage and fellow members of Political Islam knew so well were imminent, relying on the arranged abduction and payment to fulfill a commercial and political objective. The announcement by Information Minister Lai Mohammed about the negotiations between Buhari and Boko Haram has come to confirm the stories published in this media since Buhari came to power establishing a relationship between Mr. Buhari and Boko Haram.  The connections between Political Islam, Boko Haram and the Government of French Cameroun have been widely affirmed by the Speaker of the National Assembly of French Cameroun Cavaye Djibril and by the extensive contact between the criminal organization with Ahmadou Ali the Vice Prime Minister of French Cameroun and Issa Tchiroma the Minister of Communication of the said government.

The abduction  and ransom for the freedom of some 110 Dapchi School Girls North East Nigeria and that of the Chibok School girls before,  shades  more light on the operational dynamics of Political Islam in Nigeria and some countries in the sub-region, particularly French Cameroun. Cameroon Concord News shed the spotlight on this critical international security issue when then presidential candidate Mohammadu Buhari came out in support of Boko Haram and accused then President Good Luck Jonathan of deploying soldiers led by General Iherijiaka an international acclaimed General of Ibo origin in Eastern Nigeria to massacre innocent Northern Youth under the pretext of fighting terrorism. Shortly thereafter the Chibok School Girls were abducted and a political movement routing for candidate Buhari so-called “Bring back our Girls” mobilized nationally and worldwide to pressure and highlight the weaknesses of the Good Luck Jonathan Government in searching and rescuing the girls.

Jonathan was pressured to fire General Iherijiaka who was replaced by a pliable, gullible and malleable Air Force General with an alarming corruption baggage from his tenue as the Chief of Air Force Staff. The security situation degraded and the military advantages obtained under Iherijiaka were reversed.  The United States and European Union countries who disdained the audacity of Good Luck Jonathan’s politics of economic sovereignty that made Nigeria one of the fastest growing economies in the Africa and the world, took concerted action to obstruct the purchase of arms by Nigeria to fight the Boko Haram terrorist organization.  This move aimed at providing tacit support for Mohammadu Buhari whose visionless economic and political platforms were illusory making it possible for these countries to manipulate their way back to controlling Nigeria’s oil and maritime economy.  Buhari hoped to compensate his visionless and unrealistic economic agenda that favoured the rolling back the gains attained under Good luck Jonathan by floating more than one hundred unattainable objectives and declaring a corruption witch hunt aimed and destroying his political opponents. It is ironic that the political campaign of Mohammadu Buhari was bankrolled by some of the most corrupt politicians in Nigeria, among them Asiwaju Tinibu an erstwhile Governor of Lagos State and a politics for profit political godfather. Meanwhile Buhari is the undisputed leader of the Northern political platform founded on a Political Islam agenda. Boko Haram was founded or coopted as a violent extremist militant group to enforce the Political Islam political agenda of Buhari and his cohorts.  Pursuing a complex war with sophisticated weaponry by Boko Haram required a sophisticated network and enormous amount of resources. These elaborate resources were laundered through Political Islam political structures in Northern Nigeria, Northern French Cameroun and some countries of the African Sahel.

Opposition candidate Buhari came to power promising to end the Boko Haram insurgency within his first one hundred days in power. On attaining power, he opted for a negotiated solution to the release of the Chibok girls and indeed allegedly negotiated and paid a ransom for the release of some of the girls. For Buhari to have negotiated and paid a ransom, he must have known in intimate detail the leaders of Boko Haram. Hoping to protect his presidential image, Buhari opted to maintain an ambiguous relationship with Boko Haram. Not only did Buhari not tackle the war against Boko Haram as vigorously as he promised, he has through his silence and non-action encouraged the slaughter of hundreds and even thousands of Nigerians in the Middle Belt and other parts of the country by his cattlemen of his Hausa/Fulani ethnicity.

Since coming to power, President Buhari has not realized a cognizable major development or economic project. Nepotism is the hallmark of his administration. He has surrounded himself with dubious corrupt persons of his ethnicity. These are the people whose mandate appears to include the cutting of clandestine corrupt deals like the abduction of Ambazonia’s leaders in Abuja on January 5 2018.

To embellish his national security credentials, he turned to his Political Islam base to arrange the abduction and release of the Dapchi School girls through an alleged negotiation and the payment of a ransom. Information Minister went further to announce the ongoing negotiations of cessation of hostilities and a ceasefire with Boko Haram.  Cameroon Concord News Group cannot independently confirm if Nigeria briefed or associated the Multilateral Force about its negotiations and deals with Boko Haram whom they are jointly fighting. With the admitted collaboration of French Cameroun with Boko Haram to which it has paid ransom several times on engineering the abduction of foreign nationals, Nigeria, a close ally in this game, needed not formally informed French Cameroun.  Through abductions, key political leaders in Nigeria and French Cameroun make huge amounts of money to manipulate the political institutions within these countries to their political advantage. Let no one be duped, the ongoing negotiations between the Buhari Government with Boko Haram and the collaborative  actions of French Cameroun towards Boko Haram highlights the dilemma facing the international community which is cooperating with Boko Haram sponsors to search for Boko Haram in the wrong places.

To this I put my name

Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Chairman, Editor-in-Chief

Cameroon Concord News Group