Commodore Kunle Olawunmi, a retired Naval officer, said yesterday that Boko Haram terrorists mentioned names of current governors, senators and Aso Rock officials as sponsors during interrogation by the military authorities.
He, however, said President Muhammadu Buhari’s government failed to demonstrate the necessary political will to go after the high-profile politicians for reasons best known to it.
Olawunmi, who disclosed this on a Channels Television breakfast programme, Sunrise daily, also described as an aberration Tuesday attack by bandits on Nigerian Defence Academy, NDA, where two military officers were killed and another kidnapped.
“It is an aberration; you don’t attack the Nigerian Defence Academy and get away with it,” he lamented.
He lamented that NDA, like other military environments in the country, carelessly opens its doors to everyone on Fridays for Jumat prayer.
“That is the time the terrorists have to profile our security environment. It has always been the case. I have served the military intelligence for the past 35 years. Our problem is religious and socio-cultural.”
Olawunmi, a professor of Global Security Studies, said he was a member of the Intelligence Brief at Defence Headquarters during the leadership of the then Chief of Defence Staff, Gen. Abayomi Olonisakin, retd.
The intelligence expert said he told the then CDS that the centre of gravity of the Boko Haram insurgency ravaging the North-East and spreading to other parts of Nigeria was the sponsors.
“I told General Olonisakin then that the centre of this problem cannot be solved the same way we solved the problem of the Niger Delta. The Niger Delta problem was solved during (Ex-President Umaru Yar’adua) basically by me and I told them that we can’t use that same template for Boko Haram.
“I told General Olonisakin to look at the centre of gravity of the problem. I was made a member of the committee in 2016-2017 including (Chief of Army Staff, Lt.-Gen. Ibrahim Attahiru) that died.
“I told them that the centre of gravity of Boko Haram in Nigeria is the sponsors of the programme. It was beyond us because the job we needed to do was kinetic but we cannot resolve issues of sponsors of Boko Haram that were in Buhari’s government that we know them.
‘’That was why we couldn’t pursue that aspect that could have resolved the issue because we need to arrest people,’’ he added.
Olawunmi said the government had not been able to prosecute the sponsors because it was allegedly partisan.
He said: “Recently, 400 people were gathered as sponsors of Boko Haram, why is it that the Buhari government has refused to try them? Why can’t this government bring them to trial if not that they are partisan and part of the charade going on?
“You remember this Boko Haram issue started in 2012 and I was in the military intelligence at that time. We arrested those people. My organisation actually conducted interrogation and they (suspects) mentioned names.
‘’I can’t come on air and start mentioning names of people that are presently in government that I know that the boys that we arrested mentioned. Some of them are governors now, some of them are in the Senate, some of them are in Aso Rock.
“Why should a government decide to cause this kind of embarrassment and insecurity to the sense of what happened yesterday (Tuesday at the NDA)?” he queried, adding that terrorist financiers want to turn Nigeria to Taliban type of country.’’
Olawunmi also said the Department of State Services (DSS) has tremendous information on terrorists but they can’t do anything except the body language of the President .
He, however, expressed hope that the next Nigerian President in 2023 might have the willpower to bring the high-profile sponsors of Boko Haram to book.
A former deputy governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Obadiah Mailafia, said in August 2020 that repentant terrorists revealed that a serving northern governor is a Boko Haram leader.
For over 10 years, the Boko Haram terror group had killed hundreds of Nigerians in the North-East.
