Akinyemi speaks on alleged USAID involvement in Boko Haram

Former Minister of External Affairs, Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, Monday, reacted to the revelation that the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), was involved in equipping and financing Boko Haram.

Scot Perry, a US congressman, had last week, named the dreaded group as one of the terrorist groups the aide agency had sponsored in foreign countries using US tax-payers money during a congressional hearing, an exposé that raised a lot of dust within Nigeria and beyond, with Ali Ndume, foremost Bornu Senator calling for probe.

A guest of The Morning Show, a breakfast programme on Arise News Television, Akinyemi, who returned recently as the Chairman of the Governing Council of the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA), a body which he was headed as Director General, the foremost international scholar, spoke on how locals in the Boko Haram affected areas had reported of helicopters piloted by “white men,” were used to drop catches of weapons and cash for the terrorists at night.

He said at the point the committee set up by Goodluck Jonathan, former President of Nigeria to look into the terrorist group in which he was a member, had thought that the white men in question were French nationals, but Perry’s revelation had now confirmed who the collaborators were, adding that the main goal must have been to destabilise the country.

Hear him: “I served on the committee on Boko Haram and villagers kept telling us that in the middle of the night, helicopters piloted by white people kept landing and offloading guns, goods and money to these people. Now villagers didn’t even know who these people were. And they had no reason to lie to us. Now, we made a mistake, when I say we, some of us on the Boko Haram Committee, made a mistake.

“We thought it was the French that were doing this. Now we have an American congressman, saying no, it was the Americans who were doing this. Now when you add that to the (Barak) Obama’s administration refusing to sell weapons to Nigeria on the grounds that we had human rights violations in the way we were dealing with Boko Haram, not in the way we were dealing with ordinary Nigerians where there were no security issues.

“Now, we got a plane to go and buy weapons in South Africa, someone tipped-off the South Africans. It wasn’t Nigeria who tipped-off the South Africans. Who tipped-off the South Africans? You’d have to come to the conclusion that it has to be a power that had access to information that was able to do that. They not only did that, they also penetrated our armed forces.

“Behind the scene, our boys told us that there were times when they would have Boko Haram people in the sight of their guns and they would now ask their headquarters for permission to open fire, only for their superior officers to tell them to pull back and not open fire. That shows the extent to which there was penetration and destabilisation of our security forces.

“Now, who would do this? Who would destabilise our own security forces? There were Nigerians also who were involved. Now this is where I have to be careful. I’m not going to mention names. But people who were going to the United States, who were leading delegations to the United States during this period. Our ambassador there, unfortunately he’s dead now, but he wrote reports about the activities of these Nigerians, some of them governors, who were involved with the State Department and who were also involved with the White House and what they were doing.

Now, who were the people who organized trips for Hilary Clinton and John Kerry who would ignore Abuja and fly over Abuja to go and hold meetings with political operatives in parts of Nigeria without clearance with own Aso and our own phase office?