₦airaland Forum

Oh please, shut up already!
Bad belle.
God please take me beyond this height.

chimoz: It's very easy to get this men to take pictures with you especially when you are an entertainer. White billionaires have humility as their second skin.so it's not a rocket science achievement to take pictures with them.

When Washington imposed sanctions in June 2012 on Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau, he dismissed it as an empty gesture.

Two years later, Shekau’s skepticism appears well founded: his Islamic militant group is now the biggest security threat to Africa’s top oil producer, is richer than ever, more violent and its abductions of women and children continue with impunity.

As the United States, Nigeria and others struggle to track and choke off its funding, Reuters interviews with more than a dozen current and former U.S. officials who closely follow Boko Haram provide the most complete picture to date of how the group finances its activities.

Central to the militant group’s approach includes using hard-to-track human couriers to move cash, relying on local funding sources and engaging in only limited financial relationships with other extremists groups. It also has reaped millions from high-profile kidnappings.

“Our suspicions are that they are surviving on very lucrative criminal activities that involve kidnappings,” U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Linda Thomas-Greenfield said in an interview.

Until now, U.S. officials have declined to discuss Boko Haram’s financing in such detail.

The United States has stepped up cooperation with Nigeria to gather intelligence on Boko Haram, whose militants are killing civilians almost daily in its northeastern Nigerian stronghold. But the lack of international financial ties to the group limit the measures the United States can use to undermine it, such as financial sanctions.

The U.S. Treasury normally relies on a range of measures to track financial transactions of terrorist groups, but Boko Haram appears to operate largely outside the banking system.

To fund its murderous network, Boko Haram uses primarily a system of couriers to move cash around inside Nigeria and across the porous borders from neighboring African states, according to the officials interviewed by Reuters.

In designating Boko Haram as a terrorist organization last year, the Obama administration characterized the group as a violent extremist organization with links to al Qaeda.

The Treasury Department said in a statement to Reuters that the United States has seen evidence that Boko Haram has received financial support from Al Qaeda in the Islamic Magreb (AQIM), an offshoot of the jihadist group founded by Osama bin Laden.

But that support is limited. Officials with deep knowledge of Boko Haram’s finances say that any links with al Qaeda or its affiliates are inconsequential to Boko Haram’s overall funding.

“Any financial support AQIM might still be providing Boko Haram would pale in comparison to the resources it gets from criminal activities,” said one U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Assessments differ, but one U.S. estimate of financial transfers from AQIM was in the low hundreds of thousands of dollars. That compares with the millions of dollars that Boko Haram is estimated to make through its kidnap and ransom operations.

LUCRATIVE KIDNAPPING RACKET

Ransoms appear to be the main source of funding for Boko Haram’s five-year-old Islamist insurgency in Nigeria, whose 170 million people are split roughly evenly between Christians and Muslims, said the U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

In February last year, armed men on motorcycles snatched Frenchman Tanguy Moulin-Fournier, his wife and four children, and his brother while they were on holiday near the Waza national park in Cameroon, close to the Nigerian border.

Boko Haram was paid an equivalent of about $3.15 million by French and Cameroonian negotiators before the hostages were released, according to a confidential Nigerian government report later obtained by Reuters.

Figures vary on how much Boko Haram earns from kidnappings. Some U.S. officials estimate the group is paid as much as $1 million for the release of each abducted wealthy Nigerian.

It is widely assumed in Nigeria that Boko Haram receives support from religious sympathizers inside the country, including some wealthy professionals and northern Nigerians who dislike the government, although little evidence has been made public to support that assertion.

Current and former U.S. and Nigerian officials say Boko Haram’s operations do not require significant amounts of money, which means even successful operations tracking and intercepting their funds are unlikely to disrupt their campaign.

Boko Haram had developed “a very diversified and resilient model of supporting itself,” said Peter Pham, a Nigeria scholar at the Atlantic Council think-tank in Washington.

“It can essentially ‘live off the land’ with very modest additional resources required,” he told a congressional hearing on June 11.

LOW-COST WEAPONS

“We’re not talking about a group that is buying sophisticated weapons of the sort that some of the jihadist groups in Syria and other places are using. We’re talking AK-47s, a few rocket-propelled grenades, and bomb-making materials. It is a very low-cost operation,” Pham told Reuters.

That includes paying local youth just pennies a day to track and report on Nigerian troop movements.

Much of Boko Haram’s military hardware is not bought, it is stolen from the Nigerian army.

In February, dozens of its fighters descended on a remote military outpost in the Gwoza hills in northeastern Borno state, looting 200 mortar bombs, 50 rocket-propelled grenades and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. [ID:nL3N0OD3BU]

Such raids have left the group well armed. In dozens of attacks in the past year Nigerian soldiers were swept aside by militants driving trucks, motor bikes and sometimes even stolen armored vehicles, firing rocket-propelled grenades.

Boko Haram’s inner leadership is security savvy, not only in the way it moves money but also in its communications, relying on face-to-face contact, since messages or calls can be intercepted, the current and former U.S. officials said.

“They’re quite sophisticated in terms of shielding all of these activities from legitimate law enforcement officials in Africa and certainly our own intelligence efforts trying to get glimpses and insight into what they do,” a former U.S. military official said.

U.S. officials acknowledge that the weapons that have served Washington so well in its financial warfare against other terrorist groups are proving less effective against Boko Haram.

“My sense is that we have applied the tools that we do have but that they are not particularly well tailored to the way that Boko Haram is financing itself,” a U.S. defense official said.





via @Reuters

Thanks for following great @MrDada_Stephen

Thank you for this thread. The OP deserves a thousand follows. Op what is ur handle?
@MrDada_Stephen

Ask those who followed me, they will tell you how reliable i am. @MrDada_Stephen
Instant follow bk and i will link u up

Mzsolex: hehe , some folks fink they're wise tho! follow 'em, they'll follow back and then wait lyk an hour and then unfollow U. Guys use this www.unfollowspy.com to check 'em out no signup required.


#justsharing remember it's still [url=twitter.com/cirmuell]@cirmuell[/url]

I'm sorry for them. We will their names and start a thread here tagged UNFOLLOW ....

Okay, here is the deal,
Follow @MrDada_Stephen and #Nairalanders #TeamNl #FollowBkNl
And get a minimum of 10 followers plus a SHOUT OUT.

mike404: SHOULD WE BLAME ASUU FOR THIS

For what
Guy, dem never born you when i don serve finish. you high on codeine?
Abeg follow @MrDada_Stephen or facebush!

Guys, let's start an hash tag on twitter; #Nairalanders #TeamNl #followBkNl
We could trend!
Reply if u support.

If you are yet to follow @MrDada_Stephen then you are missing. I can hook you up with twitter celebs

@MrDada_Stephen . Happy New Year. Follow me and get an instant follow back plus a new year SHOUT OUT

ebamma: Step 1= dude u are a man damnit, whenever u meet her smile at her, if u get broken teeth, or dirty teeth or teeth were remain only 20 don't try this
Step2=if she smiles back, say hi, then ask her whether she is on 2go or bbm and her username or pin
Step 3=if step 2 looks tedious, ask her only for her phone number,
Step 4=call her the next day and ask her out
Step 5=take her to a fast food, i repeat fast food, don't go to a bar
Step 6=order something for her and yourself, tell her your mind, and when u are through, take her home
Step 7=if result no comot after three days go see your doctor

LMFAO. This dude is a murdafucker!

Where is the richest black woman ; Modupe Alakija?
Where is Bola Shagaya?

vickyO: Can be but might not be.

Sleeping on it is actually better.

Can we be friends? Just followed you now.

[quote author=Mayor_of_Lagos]I will disagree with this criteria.

1. We have had people serve in the top tier of our government, whether military or civilian regimes, who if they were Americans or English would be serving in the cabinet of their respective countries. Nigeria is not short on skilled professionals; the problem we have is indoctrination. Let us look at two names that my brothers in East throw around as high achievers - Soludo and Okonjo-Iweala.

Soludo is well accomplished intellectually but he lacks execution and strategy. He is academic but not political, it does not matter how many UN and global exposures he has on resume his acumen on political front is blunt. He exhibited that laxity as CBN Governor and after leaving the office he contested for Anambra state governorship and was outwitted by Obi. This year he tried to run again on PDP platform and he was again outwitted. He dumped PDP and joined APGA and was again outwitted. The man is not a good posterboy for Ibo politics or National politics; he belongs in academic field.

Okonjo-Iweala is a two-time finance minister and she is still struggling to get a good grip on decision making. Judging by her performance so far, its easy to see why Obasanjo removed her from Finance portfolio when she served under him. One must wonder if her position as Director in World Bank wasn't just for image. World bodies are required to maintain diversity in their staffing. Beside that, as a policy, the World Bank retain point of contacts for their high end clients, like Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq and so on. She has been running powerpoint slides so far since her return to the finance ministry and attending hearings in Assembly. What policy, if any, can we credit to her? She does not know how to execute, her capabilities is confined to analysis .

What we need is not necessarily someone who has international exposure or UN appointments, though it will be value added to such selection. Our priority ought to focus on models and by that I mean high achievers with track records we'd love to see repeat within the context of our own political landscape. Imagine that Nigeria is an employer and need to high manpower to manage the development and growth of our socio economic policies. At this stage of our democracy we need executioners. We have tons of papers and strategies o what to do and when to do it but unfortunately we are not blessed with transformers...people who are savvy at deploying and implementing the paper process. People who can map a policy into discrete modules and then expand the modules into a process model and step action or activity flow that mid level and low level staffers and managers can use to to efficiently operate the daily functions of their departments.

We must not keep hunting for analysts and developers when what we truly need is operators.

It is a blessing to have a person who is robust and well packaged with all these proficiencies.

My posterboy, a model, for this skillset i described is Mr Akinwunmi Adesina. Im not saying he should be put in CBN but he has a competency that should be repeated in other portfolios and departments and therefore we should look for people that have this executioner instinct and are self supervised and credible.[/quote]Nice. You sound like an intellectual.
I believe it's possible to get a personality who c possess both the theoretical accumen and also the pragmatic experience at the same time.

royalcode: Op, is Senator Mike Sonko of Kenya your mentor?

No, my distant cousin

Dahomey Amazon: Lair, you deliberately hid Lamido's first bank credentials same for other northerners and you are not bias.

Are you kidding me?! You are so narrow and shallow minded that you cannot decipher the truth from deception?
What's my business with Lamido or whatever name he's called?
Bros abeg respect yourself o, no go let me wash you o.

Baritone: bros stepho.. wake up OK, you don piss for foam Oh. .

LWKMD. I for yab you but i like as you call me bros.

BabaGnoni: Eeny, meeny, miny, moe, which of them is photoshopped telling porkies
- At the White House my foot

https://images.sodahead.com/polls/002805085/1417570027_obama_shh_xlarge.jpeg https://cdn1.fiverrcdn.com/photos/690697/medium/Obama.jpg https://cdn2.fiverrcdn.com/photos/453954/medium/OtisObama.jpg https://cdn2.fiverrcdn.com/photos/672225/medium/8eGs8RjsRwr9OWN7VnipDQ.jpg

Worefa. Duh. Me i was there live

ismokeweed: Op I like ur ambition and humor. but u look like someone inside a cage.

I be baboon like you?

Coolboi05: Well d last tym I checked, dis nonsense is from imagechef!!

Well sorry ITK, i didn't get it from there. Oversabi.

dojumav: See thief... Hw ur pics go clear pass obama own wey dey carry ur whatever u call it.... Mumu na every body dull like u...

You sound like a slowpoke Suffering from a dynasty of acute idiocy.
So Nairaland is now an avenue to insult someone. Come on dude, i am only catching my fun. If you can't be mature enoug to get that then GO AND DIE!

I'm actually enjoying the thread. I posted this without bias o prejudice, and i'm learning from the arguments from diverse angles

These comments are cracking my ribs.

dejt4u: For ur mind abi...keep dreaming

About what ?

[quote author=Frank-C]Sanusi has just a B.Sc in Economics and another in Islamic Studies in Sudan. He has neither M.Sc nor PhD in anything. He lectured B.Sc aspirants in ABU with B.Sc. We have discussed this guy severally here and if anybody wants to contradict my claim, it should be very easy to prove.

That was actually my problem with the guy and the system that made him CBN governor. That's really why he can believe that $50b can get lost from the nations coffers in 18 months. Most 3rd year Economics students will not even agree with such crap.

We need a replacement that has global exposure in this fast globalizing world. I really felt that Mansur Mukhtar woulve have been a better nominee but Yar'Adua felt otherwise and brought Sanusi. Now is the time to fix that problem and bring in an exposed man/woman. Anyway, the new CBN governor is very qualified. You will confirm this when he is announced. In my opinion, anyone who has not had stint in the top 20 business schools in the world nor the major multilateral UN level agencies should never near that office again.[/quote]THANK YOU!
Nigerians are full of unnecessary sentimental attachment to issues.

At the White House, May 2013.