A Perth-based international adviser, Dr. Stephen
Davis
• Rare footage shows torture, abuse escaped
Chibok girls endured
Zacheaus Somorin 
with agency report 

A Perth-based international adviser, Dr. Stephen
Davis, who survived months of extreme danger to
try to rescue more than 200 schoolgirls
kidnapped by terrorist group Boko Haram, has
alleged that one of the primary sources of funding
for the terror group is Nigerian politicians.
THISDAY had exclusively reported that one of the
key federal government negotiators trying to
secure the release of the Chibok girls from the
clutches of Boko Haram was Davis.
Davis has worked in Nigeria in the past with the
Archbishop of Canterbury and Head of the Church
of England, Justin Welby, to negotiate the release
of kidnapped oil industry workers in the Niger
Delta.
Speaking yesterday in an interview on ABC News,
an Australian television station, Davis, 63, said he
had realised the only way to stop the kidnappings
was to stop the sponsors of Boko Haram.
While Al Qaeda was involved in training Boko
Haram recruits, Davis said one of their major
sources of funding - aside from raiding banks -
was Nigerian politicians.
“That makes it easier in some ways as they can
be arrested, but of course the onus of proof is
high and many are in opposition, so if the
president (Goodluck Jonathan) moves against
them, he would be accused of trying to rig the
elections due early next year,” he said.
“So I think this will run through to the election
unabated. These politicians think that if they win
power they can turn these terrorists off, but this
has mutated.
“It’s no longer a case of Muslims purifying by
killing off Christians. They are just killing
indiscriminately, beheading, disembowelling
people - men, women and children and whole
villages.
“I would say it's almost beyond the control of the
political sponsors now. Terror groups are linking
up in Somalia, southern Sudan, Egypt and we
have fairly strong evidence they are talking with
ISIS members.
“They will link up with ISIS and Al Shabaab and I
think that what we are seeing in that region is the
new homeland of radical Islam in the world,” he
told his interviewer.
Davis, who returned to Australia after a four-
month sojourn with rare footage of the intense
fighting in Nigeria's North-east, as Boko Haram
stepped up efforts to establish an Islamic state,
said he established extensive contacts with tribes
and terrorist groups in Africa, including three
small cells of Al Qaeda, while working as a
troubleshooter for oil and gas company Shell in
the Niger Delta.
When news broke in April about the girls’
kidnapping from a school in the village of Chibok,
near the Cameroun border, Davis, who had
recently moved to Perth from London, decided he
could not sit on his hands.
During the journey in North-eastern Nigeria, his
life was threatened more than once, but his
Australian passport saved him.
“When confronted by groups with an AK-47 in my
face they'd say, ‘you are American, we have to kill
you’,” Davis said.
“When you say, no I’m not American, they think
you are British, and say you will still die, but when
I said I’m Australian, they said that’s all right. I
have no idea why but it’s certainly been helpful.”
The devout Christian managed to smuggle out of
the country footage of a handful of schoolgirls
who escaped from Boko Haram.
They detail the atrocities they endured, including
being raped almost on a daily basis.
Following media reports that nobody knew where
the girls were, he decided to reach out to his
contacts.
“I made a few phone calls to the Boko Haram
commanders and they confirmed they were in
possession of the girls,” he said.
“They told me they’d be prepared to release some
as a goodwill gesture towards a peace deal with
the government, so I went to Nigeria on the basis
of being able to secure their release.”
Arriving in Nigeria, Davis quickly set up talks with
commanders and he believed he had brokered a
deal.
Fearing being arrested, the Boko Haram
commanders - holding the girls across the border
in Cameroun - had a list of conditions.
They wanted the military to stand down and
promised to drop the girls in a village before
phoning to give their exact location.
Davis said they lived up to their promise, but in a
region ravaged by war and corruption, the rescue
was sabotaged.
“The girls were there, 60 girls, there were 20
vehicles with the girls,” he said.
“We travelled for four-and-a-half hours to reach
them, but 15 minutes before we arrived they were
kidnapped again by another group who wanted to
cash in on a reward.
“The police had offered a reward of several million
naira just 24 hours before we went to pick them
up.
“I understand, from the Boko Haram commanders
I spoke to, the girls eventually ended up back with
them.
“I don't know what happened to the group that
took them but I suspect it wasn't good,” he
disclosed.
Davis said a young man kidnapped by Boko
Haram and used as a driver later helped a handful
of girls to escape.
One kidnapped girl, who managed to avoid having
her mobile phone confiscated by turning it off and
hiding it in her bra, managed to call her family
while hiding in bushes, but had no idea where she
was or which direction she should be heading.
After being told to walk west by following the
sunset each evening, the four girls managed to
cross the border from Cameroun and into Nigeria
before being reunited with their families.
So far they are the only girls to have escaped
from a Boko Haram camp.
When Davis later tried to contact, via text, the
young man who helped them, he received a
sobering reply.
“The person you are trying to contact has gone on
a journey from which there is no return,” the reply
read. “He was an infidel.”
Davis said the longer he stayed in Nigeria the
more it dawned on him the kidnappings would not
end.
“It became very clear that if I was able to get 50
girls released, then another group would kidnap
70 or 80 more. So by freeing 50 you were
consigning 70 or 80 more to the same fate,” he
explained.
Davis said initially journalists from around the
world including CNN, the ABC and BBC flocked
into the country, but they concluded it was far too
dangerous to send any crew into the North-east
of the country.
He said since then, the violence in North-east
Nigeria and the threat of foreign journalists being
kidnapped and beheaded, there has been limited
coverage of the crimes being committed by Boko
Haram.
“Boko Haram used to telephone Nigerian
journalists and give them a story, but that doesn't
happen anymore,” he said.
“They go straight to social media. They post their
own material and they’ve learnt to become very
savvy on social media and use it as an
instrument to terrorise.”
Davis, who has a PhD in political geography, has
worked as an adviser to former President
Olusegun Obasanjo and the late President Umaru
Musa Yar’Adua.
He also worked for Shell in Nigeria in an advisory
capacity between 2002 and 2004.

http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/australian-negotiator-politicians-funding-boko-haram/187570/

Hmmmm

It is usually hard to fight the enemy from within.

"PDP owns Boko Haram" - Gen Azazi
"PDP politicians are funding Boko Haram" - Australian Negotiator

Verdict?

egift: "PDP owns Boko Haram" - Gen Azazi
"PDP politicians are funding Boko Haram" - Australian Negotiator

Verdict?

Opposition politicians are funding Boko haram - Australlia negotiator.