#How FG Officials Turned Boko Haram Ceasefire Into A Multi-million Dollar Scam!

Amnesty Committee Of April 2013

The recent Chad-brokered phantom ceasefire agreement between Nigeria and Boko Haram has further exposed an intricate money-spinning scam involving top federal government officials in the last two years.

The latest fraud has left President Goodluck Jonathan red-faced, Aso Rock sources told TheCable, because this was not the first time he had been deceived into believing there was negotiation with genuine insurgents. In addition to the disappointment that the insurgency is yet to end, the government has been fleeced millions of dollars by those who claim to be putting peace deals together ─ in what can now be termed as a well-organised scam involving even some trusted aides of the president.

The scam was perfected a couple of years ago when Jonathan was hoodwinked into setting up the Committee on Dialogue and Peaceful Resolution of Security Challenges in the North, otherwise known as the Boko Haram Amnesty Committee, with the belief that it would reach out to the leaders of the sect and end the insurgency.
The stated aim of the committee, which was inaugurated in April 2013, was to develop a framework for the granting of amnesty as well as work out disarmament within a 60-day time frame.

Billionaires’ Club

But some members of the committee were apparently more hopeful that they too could become billionaires, given that the Niger Delta amnesty programme has also been used to create a new generation of billionaires under fraudulent circumstances.
Probably unknown to Jonathan, it was an impossible task, as no one in the committee had a clue on how the Boko Haram leaders would be brought to the table for negotiation, unlike in the Niger Delta. Still, he was made to believe that some committee members had direct contact with the group.
However, this was not a big problem for some government officials ─ including some Aso Rock insiders ─ who quickly devised a way of arranging fake Boko Haram leaders and collecting millions of dollars from government, funded from the security budget.


 

First blood money
When the committee, headed by Tanimu Turaki, minister of special duties, was inaugurated, it began a tour of the north-east, visiting military formations and gathering information from the military chiefs.
On a visit to Damaturu, the capital of Yobe state, in June 2013, the members were scheduled to see other parts of the state when they were suddenly summoned to return to Abuja “immediately” following a claim that a “major breakthrough” had been recorded.
Hassan Tukur, the principal private secretary to the president, was said to have put a deal together with the help of Aisha Wakil, a member of the committee who claimed to be very close to Boko Haram and even nicknamed herself “Mama Boko Haram” ─ a strategy that worked very well.
The committee members were told that a “top” official of the sect, Imam Muhammadu Marwana, had been mandated by Abubakar Shekau, the leader, to sign a deal with the government.
Several government officials were now jumping on the bandwagon in order to have a slice of the action. The office of the secretary to the government of the federation offered to sign the deal on behalf of the federal government, but Jonathan insisted that the committee was fully mandated to act for the government.
Everything seemed set to consummate the deal.

High-level drama
Marwana, in a well-orchestrated drama, told Radio France Hausa Service: “We are seeking forgiveness from the people over the number of people killed in the country. I appeal to those who lost their loved ones to our activities to forgive us and on our side we have forgiven all those who committed atrocities against us.”
Turaki himself told the media: “We have sat down and agreed that Jama’atu Ahlul Sunnah Lidda’awati wal Jihad, known as Boko Haram, will lay down their arms as part of the agreement so as to end the insurgency. Government agreed with ceasefire and will look into ways to ensure that the troops relax their activities till the final take-off of the ceasefire.”
It was all a ruse.

Shekau denounced those who said he sent them to sign a ceasefire deal, and to demonstrate how serious he was, Boko Haram immediately launched an attack on Government Secondary School, Mamudo, Yobe state, killing 29 students and a teacher.
He said: “Let me assure you that we will not enter into any truce with these infidels. We will not enter into any truce with the Nigerian government. We believe in the massacre inflicted on the secondary school in Mamudo and Damaturu and other schools. We earlier warned that we were going to burn all schools. They are schools purposely built to fight Islam.”
But the drama did not stop. Turaki said it was a faction of the group that carried out the attack, and that Marwana led another faction which was genuinely Boko Haram.
Marwana was back on radio, defending his “peace deal” and saying: “I  want to state clearly that we have no hands in the unfortunate attack on the secondary school.”
Indeed, he had no hand. He was just an impostor.

More bloodshed
Meanwhile, the Nigerian military had been directed to “relax” their operations in the spirit of the ceasefire ─ and in no time Boko Haram was back in full force, killing and looting. It became clear to all that there was no deal; it was all a game.
But Nigerians, thinking the government genuinely fell into the hands of impostors, were unaware that it was some government officials that were conniving with some committee members to bring forward fake Boko Haram members in order to collect millions of dollars as “settlement fees”. TheCable could not verify how much money has exchanged hands in the last two years.
After the first deal failed, security agencies began to monitor some members of the committee and soon discovered that at least three of them were complicit in organising fake Boko Haram representatives for phantom agreements.
One of them was using his connection with the international media to arrange interviews with fake representatives of Boko Haram who often claimed that they were ready to do a deal. Another helped to recruit young men from the streets of Abuja to pose to the committee as Boko Haram members.

The end game
However, the failure of the first deal had been a blessing of sort, as members of the committee became very suspicious. They also became more rigorous in interrogating other impostors who kept streaming to their secretariat.

Culled from; www.thecable.ng