Rewritten from the Sun Newspapaers by Akin Osunlaja & Noelene Joshua
The sectarian violence that broke out simultaneously in five northern states last week was initially conceived to be an all-out Jihad (holy war), aimed at entrenching the values for which the Boko Haram Islamist sect stood.
The differences and similarities with which the taliban and Al Qaeda have promulgated a Great Satan movement has seeped effectively into Nigeria .Indications are rife that this sect has links with key polititcal figures in the north intent on sparking off a MEND reply via Islam.
The Taliban is more or less focussed on an Islamic state and has long been the mother and birthplace of numerous extremists whilst Al Qaeda has as it s "sole" target the USA.
A top security source in Abuja on Tuesday said that the group had already established operational bases in seven states, even as he questioned the decision of Governor Ali Modu Sheriff not to act on security reports sent to him two clear days before the mayhem was unleashed.
The Governor thus belies the fact just like George Bush junior in the 9/11 saga had prior heightened reports of the terror that brought america to its knees.Our Views are that this was a calculated and incisive move by insurgents within the Political framework of Nigeria
The source, who pleaded not to be named, said ‘well-meaning Nigerians’ had been sponsoring Mohammed Yusuf in his clandestine assignment, including a wealthy Kano businessman, whose arrest by security services for sponsoring the sect, was quashed by the law court in 2005. The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) had, on Monday, accused the Borno State Government of complicity in the crisis.
Another dangerous group with the same doctrine as Boko Haram is said to have been operating unfettered in Niger State.
According to the source, on July 14 and 17, more than 10 days before the group began its onslaught in Bauchi on July 26, 21 security reports had been sent to the Federal Government, detailing the activities of Yusuf and his men whose “threat had become potent, and we knew it was going to explode.”
While Bauchi State Governor, Isa Yuguda, was able to take proactive action based on the report, the source regretted that Sheriff did nothing until the group fully mobilized and went on a killing spree in his state. “If the Borno State governor had been proactive as the Bauchi governor was, this thing wouldn’t have happened,” he said.
Insisting that the group had been preparing for a Jihad, the source said it became the only feasible option when the plan of its members to go on mass exile to either Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia failed.
The option of exile was said to have been aborted because immigration arrangement did not favour them, hence they settled for the Jihad option.
it was when the group settled for Jihad that they started making their own bombs. The operational bases were sited in Bauchi, Borno, Gombe, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina and Yobe states.
According to the security source, Yusuf was re-arrested in the premises of an Abuja court by SSS operatives last November 13. He was subsequently handed over to the police after a thorough interrogation had yielded substantial evidence against him.
He was subsequently charged to the court by police, only for the SSS to learn on January 20, 2009 that he had been released, a development that was said to have surprised the top echelon of the service.
Who had such authority to release a threat to the peace of the nation still remains a mystery .
However, the SSS was said to have maintained a close tab on Yusuf and kept updating its dossier on his group.
At the state level, the source explained, each movement made by the group was reported to the governor “because we believe that governors are supposed to know the security problems in their states.” At the federal level, relevant persons were briefed.
Relevant persons ? who are these Relevant persons is it the SSS who knew already or the new security service or the top top at Aso rock ?
Even before the group struck the other weekend, the source said the SSS had information that it was ready to strike from their base in Dutse-Tanshi in Bauchi State. When security operatives stormed the place, nine members of the group were arrested while items used in local production of bombs were recovered.
Noting that the gang leader, Yusuf always managed to be absent from the scene of confrontation between his people and security personnel, but two two hours after the Dutse-Tanshi depot had been over-run by security operatives, he was said to have arrived.
Blaming porous borders for the ease with which arms were smuggled into the country, the source noted that SSS had intercepted information about the deal between the Kano businessman and Yusuf and regretted that the man won his case when he sued the service for unlawful breach of his freedom. It was also learnt that some members of the group had already been sponsored for scholarship in Mauritania.
According to the source, the group which metamorphosed into Boko Haram was stared in 1995 with the name Shahaba, by one Abubakar Lawan, who later relinquished the leadership to clerics when he got admission to study at the University of Medina in Saudi Arabia.
When the clerics needed an articulate knowledgeable person to lead the group, the lot fell on Yusuf, who later turned to accuse the clerics of not properly interpreting the teachings of the Quran. From there the doctrine changed.
Besides the N540,000 the slain sect leader was said to have got on monthly basis from the N1 due paid by members, he was said to have acquired an 80 km expanse of land in Maiduguri for farming to supplement his earning.
Worried that such a dangerous person could be allocated such expanse of land, SSS was said to have asked the state governor to take the wind off his sail by confiscating the land, but the advice was not heeded.
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Happiness delayed is happiness denied, and in whatever way the proposal may have originated, whether resulting from "the course of true love" or political calculations, Aisha Yar’adua, the third daughter of President Umaru Musa Yar’adua left the beleaguered billionaire businessman, Aliko Dangote facing disappointment after turning down his offer of marriage. But as in everything else about Nigeria’s unscrupulous richest man, now tottering on the brink of bankruptcy, Dangote will not take no for an answer!
It was not immediately clear whether the President influenced his daughter’s decision but observers have been quick to point out that, relations between the two men have been anything but cordial. Yar’adua was said to be still smarting from the snub Dangote gave him in the countdown to the 2007 elections. It is public knowledge that unlike the Obasanjo years during which Dangote had unbridled access to the corridors of power, Yar’adua has, upon taken power, tried to be his own man and attempts by Dangote to warm up to Yar’adua have been met with cold shoulders.
The reasons for the schism between the two men are still not clear, but keen observers are quick to recall that in the build-up to the 2007 elections, Dangote used his financial muscle to arm-twist and shut out Yar’adua’s chosen representative in the election strategy planning committee. By sidelining the President’s eyes and ears in the committee, Dangote wanted to keep Yar’adua in the loop over goings-on in the campaign. Yar’adua didn’t take this kindly.
If Aliko Dangote was a person of good breeding and right feeling, he will need no caution to remember that, once admitted into the heart of the first family as the suitor of a daughter, he will receive one of the greatest possible favors that can be conferred on him, whatever may be his own superiority of social rank or worldly circumstances; and that, therefore, his conduct should be marked by a delicate respect towards the parents of his lady-love. By this means he will propitiate them in his favor, and induce them to regard him as worthy of the uninsured risk Yar’adua will be taking to entrust his daughter to a moral vampire.
Tagged third-point agenda, Aisha`s nuptial race will certainly be an exciting one to watch as there are indications that the list of contenders is getting longer than the list of pretenders. The Yar’adua girls in recent times have simply become the hottest merchandise for most of Nigeria’s opportunistic, treasure-hunting gold-diggers and some wealthy but failed husbands. Little surprise therefore that Aisha Yar`adua, the physically attractive 22-year old President’s daughter has become a major acquisition challenge for Aliko Dangote.
With everything else going down but his libido, Aliko Dangote, whose tendency to flirtation may have given rise to a false hope of Aisha favoring his suit, was emotionally devastated when he was made to understand that within the President’s domestic circles, he was an unwelcome visitor whose probationary suitor status has run its full course. A source close to the Forbes-listed billionaire told Huhuonline.com that Aisha, who is an intimate friend of Aliko’s daughter Halima, sealed Aliko’s fate when she advised him to consult the rules of etiquette saying: "Halima will not forgive me if I marry you."
"Aisha just disposed Dangote like pliable wax with a lightness of demeanor that is humiliatingly scandalous," the source commented, adding that: “when a lady rejects the proposal of a man like Dangote, her behavior should be characterized by the most delicate feeling towards someone who, in offering his hand, has proved his desire to confer upon her, the greatest honor it is in his power to offer. "
No woman of proper feeling would regard her rejection of an offer of marriage from a wealthy man like Dangote as a matter of triumph: her feeling on such an occasion should be one of regretful sympathy with him for the pain she is unavoidably compelled to inflict. At all events, no lady should ever treat a man who has so honored her with the slightest disrespect or frivolous disregard, nor ever unfeelingly parade a more favored suitor before one whom she has refused.
But close sources told Huhuonline.com that Aisha had no love for Aliko Dangote to even at least evince a tender regard for his feelings; and, considered Dangote’s clandestine marriage proposal as presumptuous and intrusive. No right-minded man would desire to persist in a pursuit when he well knows that the object of his admiration has already disposed of her heart.
Aisha’s heart, sources told huhuonline.com, had stood the test of faithfulness and the trial of time with her boyfriend cum oil mogul, Abdurrahman Musa Bashir, whom she introduced as her fiancé to a Huhuonline.com source. Enter Aliko Dangote who saw the prospects of being the President’s in-law as the last line of defence to salvage what remains of his crumbling financial empire. Working behind the scenes, Dangote hatched a dastardly plot to destabilize Bashir by arm-twisting the Managing Director of the bank which financed Bashir’s operations to pull the rug under Bashir’s feet and throw his oil business in jeopardy.
The distraction was enough for Bashir to re-focus all his energies in rescuing his oil business from collapse, leaving the door open for Dangote. But Dangote forgot to learn that a good salesman does not sell his goods by knocking off his competitors; he sells his goods on their merit. With Bashir virtually out of the race, Dangote mistakenly thought that he had made the sale but not closed the deal. Don’t expect much and you won’t be disappointed. Emerging feelers suggest that there are subterranean moves by a certain Governor, with very close ties to the Yar`adua, family, to join the race to marry the President’s daughter.
The desperate quest for power amongst Nigeria`s political elite has made politicians, of northern extraction to fall over themselves in the bid to marry Aisha who has literally become an acquisition challenge and “coveted trophy” for very ambitious vultures seeking political patronage.
It should be recalled that Yar’adua`s first daughter married the Governor of Kebbi state. Since the marriage, life has not been the same for Kebbi state governor and his cronies, as things drastically became better. It was then speculated before the bubble burst, that the incumbent minister of FCT, got his plump job because of the union.
Also, in May 2007, Adamu Aliero, anointed, the present governor of Kebbi state to succeed him. As an act of appreciation, the godfather was elevated to the FCT ministry, after Zainab’s marriage. Impeccable sources confided in huhuonline.com that Adamu Aliero was made minister by Zainab. In the spirit of keeping it in the family, it was Adamu Aliero who told Nigerians that President Umaru Yar`adua will seek a second term in office. That was before the squabble between Aliero and the incumbent Governor of Kebbi state.
Recently, the governor of Bauchi state, Isah Yaguda also married Nafisa, Yar’dua`s second daughter, who has since become a major player in Nigeria’s power circles, though he belonged to the opposition party, he has since crossed to the PDP. However, sources revealed that his young wife Nafisa, like her mom, Turai has keen interest in being first lady. Though she is wife number four, she is clearly a dominating factor in the Yuguda household.
The results of the clandestine marriage proposal proved the step to have been ill-judged, imprudent, and highly injurious to the reputation of one party, and would have, in the long run detrimental to the happiness of both. As the race for Yar’adua’s third daughter, Aisha intensifies, who becomes the eventual ‘Mr. Right’, may not be certain but what is sure is that the polygamist-billionaire, Aliko Dangote is out of the race. This perhaps, may give him enough time to squarely face his losing battle against Chief Femi Otedola.
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