On Stephen-Davis, Ihejirika, Igbo and Boko Haram

By Lasisi Olagunju
(Culled from Nigerian Tribune Newspapers)

A certain Dr Stephen Davis has been in the news in the last one week helping us to unveil who sponsors Boko Haram and who does not. I am interested in who this man called Dr Stephen Davis is. Who is this Australian that is so authoritative about Nigeria and its dark secrets? Who is he? A Christian who has the ears of extremist Boko Haram commanders to the extent that they willingly revealed to him their sources of funding. Who is this white man with so  much love for Nigeria that he is seen surfacing at every deadly junction in the nation’s attempt to march out of the mire of terrorism and militancy?

I am interested in the full story of this man. Is he  genuine? Genuine what? Who does he work for? Or rather, what does he work for? Is he an agent? Or even a double agent? Where has he got the guts to always march into territories where even the angels here fear to tread? At the height of militancy in the Niger Delta in 2004, he reportedly went into the dreadful camps in the creeks and brokered a truce between the Egbesu Boys and the Nigerian state. Again, he has told us, with the same zeal and uncommon courage, he was in Sambisa forest for months scouring the undergrowths in search of the missing Chibok girls. The man’s story is as interesting as old adventure stories like D.O. Fagunwa’s Irinkerindo or Sir H. Rider Haggards’ King Solomon’s Mines. I find this man so interesting because he so much charmed the blood sucking Boko Haram that the sect’s commanders dropped the fundamentalist purity of their professed doctrine, forgot he was not a Muslim and willingly negotiated with him. This Dr Davis is not just a Christian who sauntered into Boko Haram republic, he is in fact a former Canon Emeritus at Coventry Cathedral in the United Kingdom and a close friend of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Weby. And, when he walked into Sambisa forest, the Boko Haram boys simply ignored the fact of his Christianity or did not know he was a friend of the Archbishop? And, more interesting is the revelation from him that he was guarded to the place by security men provided by the Nigerian state. Did his official guards also see the Boko Haram camps and the fighters and their commanders? And did the Boko Haram soldiers exchange banters with Davis’ official guards? Or maybe, both sides even shook hands, like true comrades at arms? Interesting!     

 In June this year, Davis told a United Kingdom newspaper, Daily Mail, that he was “encouraged by the progress” made by him in his quest to negotiate freedom for the Chibok girls. Daily Mail quoted an email from Davis as revealing that he had had “ongoing contact” with “the groups involved in the kidnapping in Nigeria’s north for seven years.” He was further quoted as describing his ‘contacts’ with Boko Haram as ‘a long process of building trust on both sides.’ Interesting! Davis must be an extraordinary Christian to have sustained a relationship and steadily built ‘trust’ with an unapologetic Salafist Muslim group over seven years. The history of Salafism in Islam is one that classes talks with infidels as a capital offence carrying the penalty of death. To these people, even Muslims outside their school of thought are infidels. That is why ISIS does not bat an eyelid before executing Muslims in its ongoing Jihad in Iraq and Syria. That also explains Boko Haram’s indiscriminate killings across the north of Nigeria. Anyone who is not with them is an enemy- and that person must die. But Dr Davis has shown that one person could have immunity from the impunity of religious fundamentalism. He is a Christian and Boko Haram is his friend with whom he shares ‘trust.’ Interesting.

When we remember that the same man who brokered peace between money-seeking, resource control - demanding Niger Delta militants is the one engaged to negotiate with religious extremists of Boko Haram hue, we are pinched to ask questions. Is there any operational nexus between these two cases? Daily Mail quoted Davis that while he negotiated peace with the Niger Delta boys, “he was frequently blindfolded and held at gunpoint.” Davis has not told us why Boko Haram allowed him to see everything, including the several camps he claimed are strewn across the north by the sect. Questions! 

I am not really interested in the people he mentioned as sponsors of Boko Haram: Ali Modu Sheriff and General Azubuike Ihejirika. He has his reasons for dropping their names. I am just interested in the commonality of friendship between these two guys and the man who hired Davis for the current Boko Haram negotiation job. And that person is President Goodluck Jonathan. They have always been friends. Or are they no longer friends? And this is why I asked if Davis is an agent or even a double agent. When, for instance, Davis mentioned Ihejirika, did it occur to him that he was indirectly pointing fingers at Jonathan who Ihejirika served as Chief of Army Staff? Indeed, in the midst of these controversies, Jonathan last week Thursday reminded Ndigbo that he had given their sons and daughters appointments they never enjoyed under any president dead or alive. And Ihejirika’s must be one of those favours to Igboland. He is the first and the only Igbo man to be Chief of Army Staff since the Civil War. So, whose interest is Davis serving in insisting on this specially favoured Igbo son when discussing Boko Haram? Or maybe I should rather ask: What interest is at work here? We may never know.

And the Chibok girls. Davis claimed he was close to rescuing about 60 of them in Sambisa forest when another group came and carted them away. But this man told Daily Mail in June this year that “the vast majority of the Chibok girls are not being held in Nigeria” and that “they are in camps across the Nigerian border in Cameroon, Chad and Niger...” Although he claimed in that report that “a small group” of the girls was in Nigeria, would figure 60 out of 200 be classified “small’’ ?

In all these, shouldn’t we ask Jonathan how much Nigeria invested in the adventure of Davis into Sambisa forest and whether the man submitted a report to the president? If he did, can the president just declassify the contents so we all get to know what ails us as a nation?

 These are just random thoughts about possibilities and impossibilities. But certainly, with this Davis narrative, an inquisitive Nigeria is close to getting answers to its nagging questions.