by Alkasim Abdulkadir

The most apt metaphor of the recent actions of Stephen Davis has to be John Le Carre’s book The Tailor of Panama and the iconic character of Harry Pendel. As the tailor of the Panama’s elites including the President. He is approached by a British undercover agent to spy on the president. On various occasions while measuring the president for his several suits, he will hear snippets of stories; afterwards the tailor started “tailoring his stories” to fit what his paymaster wanted to hear. From the President complaining that his suits are too tight and needing fixing, Pendel will report this as Noriega wants to sell the Panama Canal to China.

These stories at last filtered into Washington, where it got the Americans alarmed, they immediately planned an invasion, after some frantic phone calls by Manuel Noriega the invasion had to be called off -with the fighter jets already in Panamanian airspace aborting the operation. Like Pendell, Stephen Davis has been telling us some strange tales from Perth.

Davis has skewed the narrative, using the well measured selective perception of Nigerians who tired of the perceived government pendulum swinging between disinformation and misinformation will believe anything, as such this has began a chain of diatribe between the individuals named by him and Nigerians.

I first heard about Stephen Davis, in April/May this year during the aftermath of the abducted school girls. When my colleague Jina Moore met him at his hotel; his name came up in the process of us pitching our stories and looking at the angles and individuals to interview. A cursory check revealed that his narrative had overstepped its boundaries of advising on hostage negotiations, at a time when even other Western journalists were taken extra security precautions he claimed to have travelled to the hotspots when in actual fact he was in Abuja all through the time. The truth is the government through its several intermediaries and aides had invited individuals to help, it was at this instance that Stephen Davis appeared as an adviser on hostage negotiations. He had experience rescuing expat workers in the Niger Delta area for companies like Shell. He did well in mediating between the militants and the oil companies in an organized crime driven by ransoms. He came to understand the conflict and published reports about it -and this is how he came to the attention of the Presidency. Ahmad Salkida, one of the few known individuals with a working knowledge of the group and their thinking with unfettered access to the top leadership or Shura council of the group was also in Nigeria at the behest of the government.

Davis has skewed the narrative, using the well measured selective perception of Nigerians who tired of the perceived government pendulum swinging between disinformation and misinformation will believe anything, as such this has began a chain of diatribe between the individuals named by him and Nigerians. Once more conspiracy theorists have overlooked the ransoms, looting of commercial banks, protection money, the slush of weaponry from the armouries of Libya and the arms black market of Somalia, the loss of Nigerian Army hardware and a tragic –displaced monomania to wage war in the name of God. The aforementioned incentives are greater than what Gen. Ihejirika or Ali Modu Sheriff can offer the insurgents. These individuals should be blamed for mismanaging the crisis under their watch, in different contexts when they all had an opportunity but not for the tacit support and arming of Boko Haram.

Why are there gaping holes in Davis’s narrative? The leadership of the Boko Haram, in their warped and extremist sense will not in any way entertain any mediation from Davis; at best he will be abducted and held as a trophy thereby dragging the government of Australia into a messy abduction and ransom scenario. Why again? Stephen Davis as a white man represents in the illogical mind of the insurgents all that is wrong with the world –the west, they regard him as a “Yahudu” which literally translates to a jew, even though he is not a jewish, if he escapes the tag, then he can’t escape the Nasara tag, which translated means white man, but in a colloquial context a white Christian. No one is spared from the hate speech tag of the insurgents, from the CJTF called Katoh da gora a derogatory term meaning giant with stick; to moderate muslims who have been labeled Taghut –idol worshippers for believing in democracy and the symbols of authority. As such Davis a clergy doesn’t fit the least profile of someone with access so called Boko Haram top commanders

The tragedy of the Boko Haram insurgency has spurned scholars of radicalization and insurgency all over the world. Several European and American students have done their master’s dissertation on this, traveling from their stations to Nigeria, to see mind set driving this. In all of this Stephen Davis has never been cited as an expert before the Chibok kidnap, none of the tight knit circle of scholars of the trends of Boko Haram have ever heard of Davis, if he knew the things he claims he knows about the group, his name would have cropped up.

Boko Haram holds an extreme level of morbid hatred for Christians and moderate Muslims, for soldiers, police and SSS and civil servants, my uncle a staff of DPR Maiduguri Musa Jankara was slaughtered in Beni Sheikh when his ID was found on him last year.

In the final analysis, the continued partisan shade of engagement of the crisis will be the undoing of us all. Once more, I will reiterate that what we are faced with is a morbid desire for an Islamic state in Nigeria fitting into the global expansionist plan of Jihadist fighters all over the world. Yes, there might be some copycat violence going on for selfish reason of some politicians and ordinary citizens, but the larger picture of the insurgency in the North East is that of us caught in a web of senseless violence in the name of God. We should stop bickering and find solutions instead, lest we wake up to find the insurgents upon our doors.

——————-

Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.

Op-Ed Editor