The Jama’atul Ahlus Sunna Lid Da’awatis Jihad,JASLIDAT, otherwise known as Boko Haram has been quoted by an on-line report that the masterminds of the radical Islamic sect are some prominent Northerners, whose identities would be made public soon.

According to the report, by an adherent of the slain leader of the group, Muhammad Yusuf, who also serves as the spokesman, Mallam Ali Teshako, the sect emerged due to lack of good governance and injustice in the country.

He said the original brains behind the sect’s formation were Northern elite who, under the pretext of sponsoring youths to study in the Middle-East, offered them as mercenaries to countries interested in training terrorists.

The spokesperson of the sect, also known as Yusufiyya, named after its slain leader, said the original name of the group was Taliban. He said Boko Haram was not its name, but that it was given to it by people in the states where they have followers and have been clashing with security operatives.
According to him, those who formed JASLIDAT thought they could manipulate Yusuf into toeing their line, but he resisted.

“If he were alive, he would have spilled the beans on them. Nonetheless, we will reveal their identities at our convenience.”

He said the clashes between the group and security operatives was as a result of provocations by the police. He recalled that in 2009, the police, who had shot dead two of their members, traced them to a cemetery where they went to bury them and wounded 20 more people.

Teshako added: “Not satisfied, they trailed those wounded to a hospital in Maiduguri and prevented them from getting blood donations and treatments. In the wake of all these, we were hounded, chased from our homes, some of us were killed and many were arrested including myself.”

He indicated that many of the atrocities attributed to JASLIDAT were perpetrated by killer-squads funded by some serving and former governors in the North-East. He cited the attack on a police station that was carried out by ECOMOG militia allegedly sponsored by a former Borno State governor. He said, after the attack, his group was blamed.

Meantime, Teshako has dismissed the Akhwat Akwop as another “group of vultures” that wants to feast on misfortunes of the apex government.

“This is another group of thieves who want to seek relevance from the government.”

Investigations, however, revealed that in August 2009, shortly after Muhammad Yusuf was killed, he was linked with one businessman Bello Damagum, who was alleged to have been receiving money from an alleged al-Qaeda group in Sudan to recruit youngmen to his organisation.

Part of the funds were also allegedly passed on to Yusuf. In 2004, one Mohammed Salman (aka Ibrahim) was arrested in Lahore in Pakistan and linked to Al-Qaeda.

Same year, the State Security Service,SSS, in Kano, paraded some young men who absconded from an al-Qaeda training camp in Mauritania. The SSS director in Kano then, Sadiq Dalhatu, who is now retired, paraded them, saying they were sent to be turned into “extreme Islamic zealots.”

This led to the arrest and detention of Damagum, a director with Media Trust Limited (publishers of Daily Trust titles), and two others by SSS. Later, a court in Kano ruled that their detention was unlawful and a violation of their fundamental human rights as enshrined under chapter 4 section 35 of the constitution.

Damagum and the other suspects were detained from June 23 to July 7, 2004. They were awarded N150, 000 cost as damages. SSS was also directed to write a public apology to the three applicants, for their unlawful detention.

Teshako, however, said in Damagum was a small fry in the complex matrix of the Boko Haram web created by Northern elites. His claim was corroborated by a news website which reported that evidence of the movement’s emergence gathered by SSS were given to the police which refused to act.

It said: “Inroads made by SSS were thwarted by Muslim leaders who attacked the Director-General of SSS, Mr. Afakirya Gadzama, for trying to humiliate Islam because he is a Christian.”

The report, entitled, ‘Nigeria: al-Qaeda presence in Nigeria has been kept under wraps’ stated that “to allay fears of religious prejudices the SSS chief organised a meeting with some top Muslim leaders and some of the arrested members of Boko Haram. They (the Northern leaders) have come out to accept the findings of the security services.”