Hundreds of millions of pounds of British foreign aid given to Nigeria to help combat Boko Haram terrorists is instead being used to fund a witch-hunt against opposition politicians, it is being claimed.

Britain has committed to spending £860 million in foreign aid to Nigeria, which now boasts Africa’s largest economy, to help support the country’s efforts to crush Boko Haram terror group, which has been responsible for a spate of outrages, including the kidnapping of hundreds of Nigerian schoolgirls.

But Western officials are now raising concerns that the government of the country’s recently elected leader, President Muhammadu Buhari, is misusing the funds to persecute political opponents.

Since Mr Buhari came to power last July, a number of prominent members of the former ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) have been arrested and imprisoned without charge. Among those detained was the party’s official spokesperson.

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Most of the arrests have been sanctioned by the government-controlled Economic and Financial Crime Commission, which was set up to tackle corruption and receives funding from the Department for International Development.

But while Mr Buhari’s government continues to use British aid money to target his political opponents, it is proving less effective at tackling the Islamist-run Boko Haram terrorist group.

Much of the aid Britain provides to Nigeria is aimed at helping the country’s security forces to become more effective at tackling Boko Haram, which boasts of its links with Islamic State (Isil) and achieved international notoriety two years ago after kidnapping 276 schoolgirls in northern Nigeria two years ago.

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Scores of British military personnel – including members of the Special Forces – are based in Nigeria helping to train the military to tackle Boko Haram. But despite Mr Buhari’s pledge during last year’s general election campaign that he would make tackling Boko Haram one of his top priorities, there is growing concern among Western officials that the Nigerian military is failing to take effective action against the terrorists.

This has resulted in Boko Haram now being regarded as the world’s deadliest terrorist organisation, responsible for more deaths than Isil. There are now reports that the group is trying to train kidnapped children to act as suicide bombers.


President Muhammadu Buhari is currently on a visit to China CREDIT: WANG ZHAO/AFP
“This is a scandal in the making," explained a senior U.S. official. "There is no doubt the growing strength of Boko Haram is because President Buhari is far more interested in settling scores with his political opponents that concentrating his energy on defeating terrorists,” “The result is that Nigeria is starting to look more and more like a police state while Boko Haram just goes from strength to strength.”

• The Boko Haram suicide bomber who survived her deadly mission

Another Western diplomat added: “If Buhari was serious about fighting corruption he would be focusing all of his efforts on targeting corruption that is impeding Nigeria’s ability to focus its efforts on tackling Boko Haram.”

Accusations that Nigeria is abusing British aid will add to the growing controversy over Downing Street’s commitment to spend 0.7 percent of GDP on the foreign aid budget. Last week the Telegraph reported that DFID was under pressure to cancel £200 million of foreign aid to Tanzania following concerns over a widely condemned election.

This resulted in Dr Liam Fox, the former Defence Secretary, accusing the government of “spraying money around” simply to achieve the 0.7 per cent target.


Western officials have expressed concern about Mr Buhari’s increasingly autocratic style of government since he came to power last year. A retired major-general, Mr Buhari, 73, previously headed a brutal military dictatorship following a coup in December 1983, which lasted until he was overthrown by another coup in 1985.

Now political opponents claim he is returning to his old dictatorial ways, abusing British aid meant to improve Nigeria’s ability to tackle Boko Haram to consolidate his hold on power.

Apart from the concerns over British aid, American officials are also angry that $2.1 billion of aid given to the Nigerian military to tackle Boko Haram has not been properly accounted for.

Mr Buhari’s claim that he is winning the war against Boko Haram - recently claimed the group no longer poses a serious threat - has been undermined by recent revelations the Nigerian authorities have tried to cover up the fact that hundreds more schoolchildren have been abducted by Boko Haram.

Human rights activists have no confirmed that around 400 women and children were abducted last year by militants from the Nigerian town of Damasak.

It is now believed that some of these children may have been trained as suicide bombers. U.S. counter-terrorism experts say at least 105 women and girls trained by Boko Haram have taken part in suicide attacks since June 2014.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/12/nigeria-using-uk-aid-to-persecute-presidents-political-foes-rath/?%20

Firstly, there is no evidence Buhari ever collected that money from them. He was warned sternly not to take loans from the EU or US.
Secondly UK aid is OUR MONEY. UK can never aid Nigeria because to put it simply all it has is ours. Our exploited wealth. We know this so they should please come up with another deception because this "aid" one has ran its course.

Buhari's Dictatorial antics has gone west oo!

Buhari's Just An old sectional bigot riding on sentiment and religious divides!... He has ABSOLUTELY nothing to offer save more division!

This Guy's Cluelessness is off the charts!

BTW, who silenced Liar-General Lie Mohammed? Abi Jaundice don catch am?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/12/nigeria-using-uk-aid-to-persecute-presidents-political-foes-rath/?%20

But while Mr Buhari’s government continues to use British aid money to target his
political opponents, it is proving less
effective at tackling the Islamist-run Boko
Haram terrorist group.

Imagine. Even the government's strongest critics have accepted Buhari has done exceedingly well with the war against BH. But with the quote above, what more does one needs to prove this is a poorly executed hatchet job??

The writer probably knows nothing about Bornu or the NE but simply typed the scripts as he was told.

Who paid for it- Diezani? Jonathan? Whatever it is, I see the hand of Israelites written all over it. Only them have the audacity to tell or sponsor such bold faced LIES!!

The most dreaded terrorists are not in Sambisa forest.

if it was upto me I will feed them to the guillotine not Kuje prison.

omenka:
Imagine. Even the government's strongest critics have accepted Buhari has done exceedingly well with the war against BH. But with the quote above, what more does one needs to prove this is a poorly executed hatchet job??

The writer probably knows nothing about Bornu or the NE but simply typed the scripts as he was told.

Who paid for it- Diezani? Jonathan? Whatever it is, I see the hand of Israelites written all over it. Only them have the audacity to tell or sponsor such bold faced LIES!!

Who expected a different point of view from this guy? I guess ONLY Z ZOMBIES...

So predictable!

I bet this guy was reading through this long writeup hoping to find a paragraph that gives his Oga soft landing so he can quote it!

“This is a scandal in the making,” explained a senior U.S. official. “There is no doubt the growing strength of Boko Haram is because President Buhari is far more interested in settling scores with his political opponents that concentrating his energy on defeating terrorists,”  “The result is that Nigeria is starting to look more and more like a police state while Boko Haram just goes from strength to strength.”

Some people be like this is coming from IPOB Wailing wailer branch.

“This is a scandal in the making,” explained a senior U.S. official. “There is no doubt the growing strength of Boko Haram is because President Buhari is far more interested in settling scores with his political opponents that concentrating his energy on defeating terrorists,”  “The result is that Nigeria is starting to look more and more like a police state while Boko Haram just goes from strength to strength.

But we were told Obama commended PMB and that's an achievement already.

omenka:
Imagine. Even the government's strongest critics have accepted Buhari has done exceedingly well with the war against BH. But with the quote above, what more does one needs to prove this is a poorly executed hatchet job??

The writer probably knows nothing about Bornu or the NE but simply typed the scripts as he was told.

Who paid for it- Diezani? Jonathan? Whatever it is, I see the hand of Israelites written all over it. Only them have the audacity to tell or sponsor such bold faced LIES!!

I had to re read three times, go to the source and checked other stories on d page to be sure it was actually d site posted.
This is news reporting stood on its head and unless it was from a cloned page of d newspaper,i expect whoever wrote it to be out of work soon because even Reuters,bbc and other credible media have acknkedged the great work being done in d fight against BH,and with clear statistics and evidence to show.
As to the $2.1b assistance claim;even to a child it sounds hogwash because it's too fake to even be blived.
This must pass as the most poorly fabricated lies ever written by any news media

PRYCE:


Who expected a different point of view from this guy? I guess ONLY Z ZOMBIES...

So predictable!

I bet this guy was reading through this long writeup hoping to find a paragraph that gives his Oga soft landing so he can quote it!

Who are expected to share a similar view as this guy? I guess only inconsolable Wailing Cankerworms...

Put a little truth in their midst and they scatter in a thousand different ways, scampering for safety, like demons on sighting an exorcist.

Where are the defenders of this government, come and work for your pay.
NB: leave the message and attack the messenger alongside Wailing Wailers

doctokwus:

I had to re read three times, go to the source and checked other stories on d page to be sure it was actually d site posted.
This is news reporting stood on its head and unless it was from a cloned page of d newspaper,i expect whoever wrote it to be out of work soon because even Reuters,bbc and other credible media have acknkedged the great work being done in d fight against BH,and with clear statistics and evidence to show.
As to the $2.1b assistance claim;even to a child it sounds hogwash because it's too fake to even be blived.
This must pass as the most poorly fabricated lies ever written by any news media

They even talked about a $2billion assistance?? Wtf!! Lmao!! I didn't get to that part, I stopped at where I quoted.

This further validates my suspicion that the publication strictly a sponsored mass of trash and sounds soooooooooo much like something out of BreakingTimes or Trent. The diction is poor, falls way short of the sort of staple you get from telegraph, then the whole stuff is replete with half-truths and naked lies!!

Another shoddy work from the ever lying Wailing Cankerworms.

PRYCE:


Who expected a different point of view from this guy? I guess ONLY Z ZOMBIES...

So predictable!

I bet this guy was reading through this long writeup hoping to find a paragraph that gives his Oga soft landing so he can quote it!

Contrarily, you're predictable.

Atleast you appreciate omenka's effort in taking time to read through the article, in your case everything against Nigeria must be true. Like the lie about the phantom $2.1b aid which am pretty sure you just skimmed through without understanding how much of a gargantuan baloney the claim was.

It will also interest the queen and civilised humans of UK to understand that buhari used UK aids to commit crimes against humanity by obliterating over 1000 Shiites in kaduna all in an effort to appear Sunni Islamically correct by pleasing his Saudi masters.

The fulani militias were also armed and given executive orders to systematically eliminate all perceived hostile territories. The facts are there for all to see.

I'm gonn tell you whatsup and I need you to listen attentively!!

CHINA is the new sexy! They rose up without aids from the west, taking over territories once controlled by the west, Now effortlessly pushing Yuan to compete with the USD and you think the west will be happy with the growing relationship of Nigeria and China THINK AGAIN!!

Whatever happens though, china has done their homework, push themselves way beyond the kinda country some western policies might limit...Yes! China has gotten out of hand!!

Check the western news channels and tell me the last time they reported anything positive about china! They were forced to report china's HD images of the moon for just a few hours and during offpeak news sessions..If the west were the first to obtain this HD images, it will be the major highlight of CNN, BBC, France24 and the likes for at least a week!

While I sincerely applaud how much the west have ruthlessly pushed themselves to the top of the world ladder economically, militarily and the likes, this their crap of You are either with us or against us is absolute CRAP!!

MEANWHILE, The nonsense up there looks more like a JSS3 student trying his hands on long essays *No Coherence*

Nigerians ehnnn. You people can make a big deal out of Nothing.. So?? Even if he used it?? So? Mstwee.
Britain only has aid because of Nigeria's willing participation in the "British Commonwealth". So we currently hold the cards here. If Britain bleeps up, we leave the commonwealth, one less country for them to exploit. I suggest they solve their Refugee crisis and leave Nigerians to solve our problems.
Secondly He used it to root out PDP corruption. When he is done doing that then we can root him out too as well. For now, we are fine with it. PDP first, then APC. They must all go.

They can deceive gullible Nigerians with pictures of burnt motorcycles and roasted goats, but they can never deceive the West who have spies everywhere, even in Russia and North Korea they still manage to send their people there to monitor things

Indeed lies and deceit never lasts, these Westerners must be IPOB Yoots

A7:


Contrarily, you're predictable.

Atleast you appreciate omenka's effort in taking time to read through the article, in your case everything against Nigeria must be true. Like the lie about the phantom $2.1b aid which am pretty sure you just skimmed through without understanding how much of a gargantuan baloney the claim was.

I haven't the slightest doubt in my mind the author of the article doesn't even know who Shekau is. Someone paid for this trash, faxed him exactly what they want published and they published it verbatim! Just look at the lies and the language- doesn't sound anything like a Brit speaking!

This is just in keeping faith with their childish propaganda of hoping to give some tinge of credibility to their lies by throwing some white man in front of it. They would believe and celebrate this but call Steven Davis a mad man!

Reminds me of how they always manage to get some street dwelling homeless white man (or at best some ignorant white student), dust them up, put on some fresh cloth and arm them with a biafran "flag" which he waves in a photo-op.

Then they splash the useless pictures all over the place with some bold egotistical titles: UK supports Biafra!!!

Funny bunch of people.

SleekMallam:
It will also interest the queen and civilised humans of UK to understand that buhari used UK aids to commit crimes against humanity by obliterating over 1000 Shiites in kaduna all in an effort to appear Sunni Islamically correct by pleasing his Saudi masters.

The fulani militias were also armed and given executive orders to systematically eliminate all perceived hostile territories. The facts are there for all to see.

Well, if indeed Boko Haram are getting stronger like the article claimed, you will be gracing us with like 10 recent succesful raids by them, the fact that all you could muster up were redherrings will go a long way in consolidating well meaning Nigerian's confidence on PMB.

#CleanSweepBuhari Jeffrey Archer must have been on o something...

omenka:
They even talked about a $2billion assistance?? Wtf!! Lmao!! I didn't get to that part, I stopped at where I quoted.

This further validates my suspicion that the publication strictly a sponsored on and sounds soooooooooo much like something out of BreakingTimes or Trent. The diction is poor, falls way short of the sort of staple you get from telegraph, then the whole stuff is replete with half-truths and naked lies!!

Another shoddy work from the ever lying Wailing !Cankerworms.

Your brain needs a reset button, you have lost it!

This thread is earlier

https://www.nairaland.com/3045212/scandal-buhari-using-boko-haram

A7:


Well, if indeed Boko Haram are getting stronger like the article claimed, you will be gracing us with like 10 recent succesful raids by them, the fact that all you could muster up were redherrings will go a long way in consolidating well meaning Nigerian's confidence on PMB.

Do you even understand the extent your government goes to suppress news of boko harem all in an effort not to embarrass a general that rushed to claim technical victory? Few well meaning Nigerians know this but are scared to be set up and labelled boko harem hence, Intel is being leaked while alerting civilised societies. The world is truly seeing a clanish and dictatorial Buhari in HD.

omenka:
I haven't the slightest doubt in my mind the author of the article doesn't even know who Shekau is. Someone paid for this trash, faxed him exactly what they want published and they published it verbatim! Just look at the lies and the language- doesn't sound anything like a Brit speaking!

This is just I keeping faith with their childish propaganda of hoping to give some tinge of credibility to their lies by throwing some white man in front of it. They would believe and celebrate this but call Steven Davis a mad man!

Reminds me of how they always manage to get some street dwelling homeless white man (or at best some ignorant white student), dust them up, put on some fresh cloth and arm them with a biafran "flag" which he waves in a photo-op.

Then they splash the useless pictures all over the place with some bold egotistical titles: UK supports Biafra!!!

Funny bunch of people.

Well judging by utterances of so many infamous members of the opposition that Apc booted them out through propaganda, their resolve now is to stage a come back through every means necessary.

They think malice, outward lies, and preposterous blackmail will accelerate their ascension to power again, forgetting this same pettiness cost them almost everything before.

So if you ask me, my verdict is "Pdp's antics will enervate it to extinction".

SleekMallam:

Do you even understand the extent your government goes to suppress news of boko harem all in an effort not to embarrass a general that rushed to claim technical victory? Few well meaning Nigerians know this but are scared to be set up and labelled boko harem hence, Intel is being leaked while alerting civilised societies. The world is truly seeing a clanish and dictatorial Buhari in HD.

Lol. Would you give up already, this excuse in your defence is lame.

In this era where a single tweet with a catchy hashtag will trend globally in couple of minutes with no gov't restricting access to any of the social medias, dude you really crack me there.

A7:


Lol. Would you give up already, this excuse in your defence is lame.

In this era where a single tweet with a catchy hashtag will trend globally in couple of minutes with no gov't restricting access to any of the social medias, dude you really crack me there.

You've shown you lack the ability to reason critically or think outside a box. Do you know why networks were unplugged in those gray areas?

Hahahahaha@ Boko haram is getting stronger. This is the most meaningless and useless news have ever seen in my life. Who paid this Id*iot to write this shi*t

This is a pure hand work of a criminal party call PDP*igs. If dem like make dem go heaven go write rubbish about Buhari,it won't still stop him from fighting corruption.

Long live mr president

Long live Nigeria.

SleekMallam:

You've shown you lack the ability to reason critically or think outside a box. Do you know why networks were unplugged in those gray areas?

Mnsp's were shut when Jonathan was president, it didn't happen while Buhari is president. If that stood out to you channel the criticism to Gej not Pmb.

And tomrw somebody will say PDP is corrupt while exonerating APC?

May it never be well with such a person!

Lalasticlala

Nigeria has many enemies within. PDP is number one enemy of Nigeria.. Enemy of progress. Think PDP, think corruption, failure and ineptitude. Smh.