SSS probes Sheriff over alleged Boko Haram sponsorship
The Department of State Security, said it had summoned a former governor of Borno State, Modu Sheriff, for interrogation over his alleged sponsorship of Boko Haram.
The service stated that it had quizzed Sheriff twice in connection with his alleged involvement with the sect, adding that investigation was ongoing into various aspects of the allegations by the Australian negotiator, Stephen Davies, who named the former governor as one of the financial backers of the sect.
The Deputy Director, DSS Public Relations, Marilyn Ogar, said this on Friday in Abuja while parading the co-mastermind of the Nyanya blast, Sadiq Ogwuche, along with other suspects, Ahmed Abubakar, Muhammad Ishaq, Yau Saidu, Anas Isah and Adamu Yusuf.
Ogar dismissed allegations by Davies that a former Chief of Army Staff, Azubuike Ihejirika, was one of the sponsors of the sect.
She stated that it was “uncharitable for Nigerians to reward someone who laid down his life, to associate him with the sponsorship of the sect.”
Ogar said, “Sheriff has been invited twice and he has been invited again (over his alleged sponsorship of Boko Haram). Investigation is ongoing to review every aspect of Davies allegations.”
The DSS spokeswoman said contrary to claims by Davies that the CBN official who handled the funding of
Boko Haram, is an uncle to three of those arrested in connection with the Nyanya bombings, none of the six suspects in the agency’s custody was related to another by blood.
“In other words, none is a cousin or nephew to any other and only two suspects namely Yau Saidu and Anas Isah have ever lived together at the makeshift clinic called ‘Kishi Clinic’ operated by Rufai Tsiga, a co-mastermind of the bomb blast who is still at large,” she explained.
She added that further interrogation of suspects indicated that none lived with or has any relationship with any staff of the CBN, noting that the clarification was necessary to correct the erroneous impression in the media.
Ogar denied that the DSS was the source of the information credited to Davis, describing him as “a self-styled and self-appointed negotiator.”
Ogwuche, who was repatriated to Nigeria from Sudan, denied being a member of Boko Haram in an interview with journalists, stressing that he had no hand in the Nyanya bombings as he was in Sudan at the time of the incident.
The suspect, however, admitted to have donated N30,000 to widows of Boko Haram members through Tsiga, who had been declared wanted for his roles in the Nyanya blast.
Asked why he deserted the Army, he stated that he did it in order to go and study Arabic in Sudan even as he admitted receiving lectures and taking demonstrations with a Jihadist group in Britain before he came back to Nigeria.
He said, “I am not a member of Boko Haram and I don’t know anything about the Nyanya blast. I deny it because I was studying in Sudan when the incident happened.”
Saidu, a boy to the co-mastermind of the blast, however, identified Ogwuche as a regular visitor to Tsiga ‘clinic’ where the plot to bomb Nyanya was hatched.
Source: The Punch
