Please read this band be informed. This is just one of the reason why GEJ is my choice. It is dangerous to do otherwise. We shouldnt give our fish to a hawk for keep. This interview also revealed the negligence of OBJ Ambassador Bola Dada shares his experiences in international affairs as a former diplomat with ADEOLA BALOGUN and JESUSEGUN ALAGBE Did you discover anything inimical to the interest of Nigeria in the reports of your boss? _---------- Many! He was actually being selective in his reports. At that time, the war between the Northern and Southern Sudan was on and he was always behind the North who were Muslims. I discovered he was pro-Northern Sudan. He picked whatever he liked, never giving the true picture. On two or three occasions, former President Olusegun Obasanjo invited him and asked if he was still Nigria’s ambassador. He asked him how many embassies Sudan had. At that time also, Sanni Yerima, former governor of Zamfara State was in Sudan for two weeks and underwent indoctrination. He was exposed to all the training camps of Osama Bin Laden, who was my neighbour. In fact, Osama Bin Laden’s office in Sudan was just a few blocks away from our embassy. No report was made. Our embassy never reported Osama Bin Laden. In addition to having his headquarters in Sudan, Osama Bin Laden also had many firms and industries which he only used as a façade because he was actually using those firms as training camps for Al-Qaeda. Among his trainees were many Nigerians from the North. They would leave Nigeria as if they were going to study but were at the training camps of Osama Bin Laden. I got wind of all these things and told them, but my reports were dismissed. It was a policy of “see nothing, say nothing” because they were working for Muslims. They were not able to draw the line between Arabisation and Islamisation. What Sudan was practising was both Arabisation and Islamisation which led to the breakaway of the South from the North. That was the dangerous part of it which was also my major concern. In fact, that was the main concern of Mo Ibrahim, the richest Sudanese. That’s why it pained him seriously up till now that Sudan must not have divided just because of religion. And it’s one of the reasons why he established the Mo Ibrahim prize. That is the motive behind the prize. Up till today, the man is still pained. ++++++++++ Are you saying what was being practised in Sudan was exported into Nigeria? ++++++ When Sudan came under pressure during the US Bill Clinton era, they sent Bin Laden away. Osama Bin Laden had established himself there. In fact, one of his wives was the daughter of the Speaker. So when Sudan was under pressure to send Osama Bin Laden away, he decided to divide his Al-Qaeda army into three; he took the first team to Afghanistan and kept the second team in Sudan; the third group he sent out to be disturbing the whole world, including Magreb which is close to Mali, Chad and Niger. I raised an alarm in 2001 that Al-Qaeda was in Nigeria – that Al-Qaeda had penetrated Nigeria through Chad. You know Chad has a border with Borno State. We have about eight million Nigerians in Sudan: people who settled there after pilgrimage. Many who couldn’t reach Saudi Arabia just settled there. And Al-Bashir (Sudanese president) was a descendant of Borno State. I reported all these, including the fact that Yerima was there at that time but I was ignored. Yerima got back to Nigeria and the following day, he declared Sharia. And from then, they were sending students for Jihadist training. Then when I got wind of the distribution of Osama Bin Laden Al-Qaeda groups, I reported. I told them to check our borders between Mali, Niger, and Chad – that Al-Qaeda was on the move. It got to a stage that it became evident that my report was becoming a concern to our permanent secretary then who incidentally had intelligence security background as a former director of the Nigeria Intelligence Agency. His name is Ambassador Heart. He brought in his NIA background into the Foreign Service. He knew what was sensitive and newsworthy. So he took the case seriously and played his part. But instead of our government sending inspectors were to check the veracity of my reports, they didn’t do that; they would just call the NIA man there who was also a Borno man who would refute anything I said. He would tell them not to mind me because I was a Christian and a religious bigot. In fact, he said Obasanjo deliberately sent me there to spy on the ambassador. That was how they usually dismissed my reports. ------------- What did Obasanjo do when he got wind of your reports? ..-----_-_--_-_-_--_- I wouldn’t know what he did but I guess some of the reports did not get to him. One of such was about a Sudanese consulate in Kano who spent 50 years as a consul-general in Nigeria. That is not allowed, but in the case of Sudan, because of the close relationship with Ahmadu Bello and Muhammadu Ribadu, they allowed Sudan to open a honorary consulate in Kano and instead of putting a Nigerian there, they put a Sudanese. I drew attention to this anomaly and by the time I left the place in December 2001 before I was sent out to Uganda, the Sudanese man was spending his 50th year there as a consul-general in Nigeria. Where does that happen? I knew of it from a Sudanese official himself at one party at the Ghanaian embassy. I sent a report asking why they would allow a consul-general to spend 50 years in Nigeria. Meanwhile, his activities had nothing to do with consular job; it was mainly for Islamic purposes. That is why Sudan is being kept on the US watch list as a terrorist country. And this is a country that our country is romancing. ----------------- Do you see a link between the Boko Haram insurgency and what happened then? ------------------ There is a lot. As far as I am concerned, Boko Haram is an offshoot of Sharia. Meanwhile, in 2001, I learnt from a Southern Sudanese while I was there that at Khartoum sometime in 1994, some Sudanese officials were lamenting that the then presidents of Nigeria were not radical Muslims; they were lamenting that the golden days of Islam had gone. They were not happy that General Ibrahim Babangida and Muhammadu Buhari did not follow in the footsteps of Ahmadu Bello. So they planned on strategising again. They went to Kano to do that. Whatever the strategy they made that time, there is a link to what is happening now. Meanwhile, Babangida compensated them by dragging Nigeria to the Organisation of Islamic Countries, still they were not satisfied. Also, there was a kind of covenant between Sudan and Libya to destabilise Nigeria to promote Islamisation. So, what is happening to President Goodluck Jonathan now may have something to do with that pact. They call it Afikaya, a doctrine that all African states must be governed by Muslims only. Gaddafi fought for it rigorously before he died – that all African presidents must be Muslims and in any African country where by error a Christian is there, they should make life difficult for that person until he is deposed. I got wind of it in one document. I read it with my eyes that all African countries must be governed by Muslims and any country that is mistakenly being ruled by a Christian, they should make life difficult for him. They said it’s the injunction of the Quran. I read it. Boko Haram insurgency may have stemmed from such injunctions and as a result of the faulty policy of ambassadorial appointment and deployment. According to the Nigerian Constitution, ambassadorial appointment must be 75 per cent career-oriented and 25 per cent political. Ambassadorial jobs should be given to people who have experiences related to such jobs, not just anybody. That’s the constitution which was violated many times. In fact, the greatest violator was Babangida. Read the full story on the link punchng/news/i-was-chased-out-of-sudan-when-i-raised-the-alarm-about-boko-haram-ambassador-bola-dada/
Posted on: Sun, 25 Jan 2015 19:24:30 +0000
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