A federal lawmaker, Ahmadu Jaha (of the All Progressives Congress representing Damboa-Gwoza-Chibok), has come under fire over his recent comment on activities of Boko Haram insurgents in Borno State.
The lawmaker had during a plenary session of the house of representatives last Tuesday claimed the insurgents were occupying eight out of
10 local government areas in the northern part of Borno State.
Reacting to Jaha’s claim, the Buhari Legacy Centre wondered why a lawmaker could throw away decorum by raising false alarm on the alleged occupation of the insurgents in some parts of Borno State which is unture.
It said the lawmaker was hiding under parliamentary immunity to test how the country will react to the knowledge that terrorists are now openly represented in the National Assembly.
The group, therefore, demanded for the immediate resignation of Jaha for openly identifying with the dreaded sect group.
BLC made these comments at a press conference addressed by its Director of Communications, Godwin Apeh, on Monday.
His speech read below.
We had always known that persons in positions of influence and authority are closet Boko Haram members. It is also common knowledge that such persons are in the habit of sabotaging government forces in support of terrorists and that they always ramp up such activities whenever the Nigerian Military is gaining upper hand over the insurgents.
However, Nigerians did not bargain for the travesty that involves a supposedly elected federal lawmaker defecting to become the de facto representative for Boko Haram in the federal parliament of all places. It was equally not conceived that he will attempt to jeopardize the good work that the military is doing by deploying industrial scale lies and manipulating scanty facts to spin a web of deception.
To paraphrase Jaha’s delusion as delivered in his poorly constructed English, “Substantial geographical area occupying Borno state and other insurgency affected areas is still under the occupation of Boko Haram whether we like it or not. In a local government that has 13 electoral wards like mine, Gworza, only three wards are not under the occupation of Boko Haram.
“Out of the ten local governments in northern Borno it is only two local governments and that is still their headquarters that is not under the occupation of Boko Haram…the truth of the matter is that the soldier there is being paid N500 per day that is totalling N15000 in a month…We are funding them we have to know exactly what they do with the fund.”
It is most unfortunate that this Boko Haram lawmaker decided to resort to tales by moonlight to launch himself as a pro-insurgent representatives. By lying that the terrorists control even a square inch of Borno state, or any other part of Nigeria, what the lawmaker is attempting to achieve is to dubiously legalize some portion of Nigeria to terrorists. The strategy is to trick the House of Representatives into documenting this aberration in its votes of proceedings, which will subsequently make it into government gazette that he and his terrorists will then use to seek and demand for government recognition of their holding onto territory that they would ask to be allowed to keep.
False Boko Haram narratives are aimed at bringing about fraudulent gains for some north east politicians that are in line to benefit from from continuous crisis in their homeland. Jaha, from the information at our disposal, is a pilot scheme for testing the waters ahead of when other pro-Boko Haram representatives and Senators will declare support for the terrorists. There is even a plot to use the state parliament to declare Borno state independence as a caliphate, a plot that has been continually stalled by the strings of successful operations against the terrorists by the military.
Even though much has not been done to expose in details the financing of Boko Haram, we have cause to suspect that the likes of Jaha and his collaborators that are still in the closet are using their salaries, allowances and constituency project allocations to finance Boko Haram.
In addition to abdicating their roles and responsibilities, they further engage in siphoning public funds in the name of non-existing constituency projects, some of which they use for arming youths in the name of Boko Haram. These are some of the ploys they adopt to prevent checks and balances that would have kept them under control from going haywire and destroy the country.
We have grave concerns that these Boko Haram lawmakers have unfettered access to military and intelligence briefings that they become privy to because of their privileged positions.
From the committees that receive briefings on the war on terrorism to the committees that review military related budgets, these compromised lawmakers are well positioned to glean information that they passed to Boko Haram to have kept the insurgents being able to adapt to match the changes in strategy by the military. For instance, by demanding details of how military money is being spent, Jaha is able to pass information to Boko Haram about how to counter military operations launched against them.
In view of the forgoing, it has become pertinent that immediate steps are taken to address the political arm of Boko Haram. These steps should be targeted at: one, identifying other pro-Boko Haram lawmakers in the National Assembly and prevent them from legalizing Boko Haram in national documents and to also prevent them from allocating any portion of Nigeria to terrorists. Two, the finances of politicians in the northeast should be kept under watch for potential terrorism financing so that the terrorist group can be starved of funds.
Three, is to track the relationship between politicians like Jaha and those in his circuit in order to unveil the identities of those that are behind the persistence of terrorism in the region.
Additionally, we call on the ICPC to investigate constituency projects executed by these lawmakers from the north east in the last eight years. The objective of this is to verify that the money meant for such projects were not channelled into buying weapons for terrorists, arranging logistics for them and providing training for the insurgents.
Because the web of complicity is extensive in the region, the searchlight must also beam on the third tier of government, whose allocations have not been used for anything meaningful and could have been diverted from source to support terrorists. We therefore demand accountability from local government council chairmen in Borno state, particularly the ones listed by Jaha – there has been suggestions that some Boko Haram attacks are flag operations that are carried out to help these chairmen conceal their failure to execute projects. They always lie that the projects they executed were destroyed by terrorists when in reality they had not done anything on ground before such sponsored attacks.
It is sad that the lives of Nigerians are being lost to these questionable politicians as they struggle cover their tracks by inviting Boko Haram to stage attack to cover their tracks for executing sham or non-existent projects. This is a situation that must not be allowed to continue in the interest of humanity.
Above all, Nigerians must unite and rise against Boko Haram having representation in parliament as being done by Ahmadu Jaha. It is a dangerous development that could one day lead to the terrorists gaining enough members to block key legislation or to even tamper with the nation’s anti-terror legislation as they are currently crafted.
The intelligence agencies are strategic in preventing this from befalling the country by helping to identify Jaha’s accomplices before they strike deep in the heart of the country’s political structure.
Pending when they will be fished out and made to answer for their crimes, we urge those that are exploiting legitimate offices to undermine the country to resign these posts and be brave enough to openly join the ranks of Boko Haram so that the laws of the land can take their course against them. We expect Jaha to be brave enough to identify with the side he has chosen in this regard. He must stop pretending to be a member of the House of Representatives and openly identify with the Boko Haram to which he belongs.