A former naval officer, Commodore Kunle Olawunmi (retd), has said that Boko Haram terrorists had, under interrogation by military authorities, named some serving governors, legislators and presidency officials as sponsors of the murderous insurgents.
Speaking yesterday on Channels Television programme, Sunrise Daily, Olawunmi, who is a professor of Global Security Studies, said President Muhammadu Buhari’s government had failed to demonstrate the necessary political to prosecute the sponsors because of its alleged partisanship.
“Recently, 400 people were gathered as sponsors of Boko Haram, why is it that the Buhari government has refused to try them? Why can’t this government bring them to trial if not that they are partisan and part of the charade going on?
“You remember this Boko Haram issue started in 2012 and I was in the military intelligence at that time. We arrested those people. My organisation actually conducted interrogation and they (suspects) mentioned names.
“I can’t come on air and start mentioning names of people that are presently in government that I know that the boys that we arrested mentioned. Some of them are governors now, some of them are in the Senate, some of them are in Aso Rock.
“Why should a government decide to cause this kind of embarrassment and insecurity to the sense of what happened yesterday (Tuesday at the NDA)?”
The security expert also said the Department of State Services (DSS) has so much information on terrorists but their hands are tied except the body language of the president says otherwise.
Olawunmi expressed hope that the next Nigerian President in 2023 might have the will power to bring the high-profile sponsors of Boko Haram to book.
He said he was a member of the Intelligence Brief at Defence Headquarters during the leadership of the former chief of defence staff, Gen. Abayomi Olonisakin (retd).
According to him, he told Olonisakin that the centre of gravity of the Boko Haram insurgency ravaging the northeast and spreading to other parts of Nigeria was the sponsors.
“I told General Olonisakin then that the centre of this problem cannot be solved the same way we solved the problem of the Niger Delta.
“The Niger Delta problem was solved during (Ex-President Umaru Yar’adua) basically by me and I told them that we can’t use that same template for Boko Haram.
“I told General Olonisakin to look at the centre of gravity of the problem. I was made a member of the committee in 2016-2017 including (Chief of Army Staff, Lt.-Gen. Ibrahim Attahiru) that died.
“I told them that the centre of gravity of Boko Haram in Nigeria is the sponsors of the programme.
“It was beyond us because the job we needed to do was kinetic but we cannot resolve issues of sponsors of Boko Haram that were in Buhari’s government that we know them.
“That was why we couldn’t pursue that aspect that could have resolved the issue because we need to arrest people,’’ he said.
On the attack on the Nigerian Defence Academy where two officers were killed and another abducted, Olawunmi described the invasion as an “aberration”.
He lamented that NDA, like other military environments in the country, carelessly opens its doors to everyone on Fridays for Jumat prayer.
“It is an aberration; you don’t attack the Nigerian Defence Academy and get away with it.
“In 2017, I carried out an investigation by the minister of defence that wanted me to check what was going on with the training and the security there (NDA). I remember I spent about a week in the NDA with the commandant and the staff but something struck me: every Friday, the gate of NDA is thrown open and everybody has access to pray in the mosque.
“On Fridays, you are going to see the same thing happening across all military formations in the country…If you go to Defence Headquarters, I served at the Defence Headquarters as the Deputy director, defence administration between 2015 and 2017, throughout my two years at the Defence Headquarters, I received visitors twice because of the strict security architecture there but every Friday, the gate of the Defence Headquarters is thrown wide open for everybody to come in and observe Jumat.
“That is the time the terrorists have the time to profile our security environment. It has always been the case. I have served the military intelligence for the past 35 years. Our problem is religion and socio-cultural,” he added.
