Former Ijaw Youth Council President and leader of the Niger Delta
Peoples Volunteer Force (NDPVF), Alhaji Mujahid Dokubo-Asari has
revealed how he met some leaders of islamist militant group, Boko Haram.
Speaking in an interview done by the Vanguard, the son of a former
judge in Rivers State judiciary said while he met a lot of the leaders
of the terror group while he was in solitary confinement in SSS
underground for 10 months and 11 days.
According to Asari Dokubo, who clocked the golden age of 50 on June
1, 2014, some of the Boko Haram’s leaders he met while in prison were
Muda Shiru, Mohammed Isam, Yusuf Hussein, Asan Yusuf and Mohammed Bello.
Below are excerpts from the interview where he tells the story of his many struggles among others:
Let us start with your many encounters with the law and arrests. We
recall you were a regular guest to the offices of security agencies.
Arrest was a regular thing. I can’t really tell. I became used to
arrest. In fact, the police and SSS in Port Harcourt, maybe they advised
the government, saying ‘pls, just leave this guy alone. This guy,
arrest no dey do am anything’. (Laughing and speaking in pidgin
English). ‘Just leave him alone. The guy enjoys getting arrested’.
Yes, that was one of the greatest undoing of Obasanjo because he
thought I could be cowed. Go and look at my trial videos. There is trial
like that where the judge was put in the dock. I was the one
questioning the judge. It is not possible. So, the government and
Obasanjo really, really, really did not understand the type of person he
was dealing with. May be in Nigeria, there were no such people then.
Today, we have Boko Haram. So, a new group of people has started.
Were you ever taken to any dungeon…?
(Cuts in) I was in SSS underground for 10 months and 11 days in solitary confinement.
How did you cope?
I would have run mad. Many people did. But because I had memorized
parts of the Koran, instead of talking to myself, I just recited the
Koran. That was what kept me alive. If I had not memorized the Koran, I
would have been mad. Talking to yourself is a different thing. But this
one, you are reading, edifying your soul.
So, while in prison, did you get to meet with any of the people now linked to Boko Haram?
I met with so many people, not only Boko Haram militants. Yes, I met
with a lot of them: Muda Shiru, Mohammed Isam, Yusuf Hussein, Asan
Yusuf, Mohammed Bello.
Who were these people?
They were leaders of the group that is now called Boko Haram. They were arrested and repatriated from Libya.
Do you know if they are still alive?
Yeah. But some of them are no longer with them. Isam is no longer with
them. I don’t have their contact. But I believe that the majority of
those people may have been dead because we had very close relationship
when we were in prison even though we didn’t see face to face. They were
in their cells and I was in mine; so we hit the wall and talked. During
prayers, we prayed together by shouting.
If that is the case, don’t you get to talk to them to broker ceasefire and all that or do we have new faces now?
No, no, no. It depends on government approach. Someone in government
thought it could be wished away, that it was easy. Boko Haram? ‘It will
fizzle away’ and all the warning we gave them, they did not accept. They
misled the government into believing that it could be wished it away.
If they had taken a decisive action at that time, I don’t think that
this would have reached the stage it has reached now.
But a decision was taken on their leader, Yusuf Mohammed?
That was not the sort of decisive action. The killing of Yusuf Mohammed
was a mistake. If Yusuf Mohammed were to die, he should have gone for
trial. Nobody should use his whims and caprices as the law like what
Saddam Hussein said “whatever I wrote with my hand, that is the law”.
That was what Yar’Adua did. Why should you kill somebody
extra-judicially? Take him to court if he had committed any offense. You
have the laws. If they had followed due process, it would have
mitigated what is happening. But they did not follow. They went outside
the law. When you go outside the law, you are also telling the other
person to also meet you outside the law.
The thinking in many quarters now is that these people are taking a
revenge on the government while some people disagree, saying it is pure
terrorism. You have also said they are acting on a wrong ideology. How
do you reconcile all these?
Yea, they are acting on a wrong ideology but even if it was a
revenge, Islam does not permit you to take people who are not
combatants. When you take the lives of people who are not combatants,
then you are not longer fighting the cause of Allah because Allah SWA
clearly said in the Koran that if you kill an innocent man, it seems you
have killed the whole world.
Let’s go back to the struggle. Do you think it has paid off?
Not 100 percent. Maybe 20 percent. We have somebody that looks like us,
dresses like us, eats our food, dances the way we dance as President. It
is a victory over those who feel that they were born to rule. Who says
they are born to rule? It is a negation of that erroneous position.
But to everyone in Nigeria, the President is Nigeria’s President not
an Ijaw President even though he is coming from that background.
Yes, it is true. But he came from somewhere. He did not fall from the sky.
The President has been accused of not really been presidential in the
real sense of the word. Again, you have very many challenges bedeviling
the country which many Nigerians had expected him to deal with
decisively.
Yes, most of us feel that he has not done things the way they ought to
be done. But there are individual differences. For instance, does Mr.
President believe in things that the ordinary Ijaw man believes? The
ordinary Ijaw man who was at the airport to bring the corpse of Isaac
Boro; that the Ijaw nation must be liberated, must be independent? Do
most of the elites share the same beliefs that we share? No.
You are quoted as saying that the abduction of the school girls in
Chibok is a scam. Some people feel shocked by that statement coming from
you even when we have seen the international community coming in…
(Cuts in) which international community? The United States of America
with her allies Britain and the European Union cajoled the whole world
and told us that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. At the
end of the day, were there weapons of mass destruction? There was none.
So the international community for whatever intent and purpose that is
compelling them to do what they are doing is best known to them. But it
will not be far from economic interest. How can you believe that 270
girls will be taken? How? It is not possible. If you tell us that 20
girls were taken, 30, maybe 50, fine. How will you tell us that 270
girls were writing physics exam? How? In which school? Where? Even in
the most educationally advanced part of this country, can you find any
school where even 20 students are writing physics? I run a school. How
many of my students are writing physics? They just finished their SSCE?
And this is an elitist school, we make very good results. How many
people are writing physics? Who are they telling? So, if you are not
into education business, somebody can cajole you and tell you a lot of
stories. When they took the students, the Principal, who said she
thought they were soldiers, again said she was in Maiduguri for medical
treatment when they came. Her daughter too was in the school. Why didn’t
they take her daughter? Why did they take other peoples daughters? The
military was aware four hours before the attack; the people who sent the
information that Chibok was to be attacked four hours to the military,
why did they not inform the chairman of Chibok, SSS Rep, DPO or anybody
in Chibok? The Chibok community leader who has been talking, why didn’t
they say, ‘Please, move the girls, we are suspecting that there was
going to be an attack on the school? Move these children out of the
school’. Why was it only the military they told? They couldn’t reach any
other person but the military? What are they telling us now? Ok, today,
one of the girls said she ran and jumped over the fence. She climbed
the tree and then the man was saying come down, come down o’. What sort
of thing is this now? So, the girl can climb a tree faster than a man
with a gun? Why didn’t you just simply shoot her and he left her and
went away? And some four persons were found in their house and they said
they escaped and came back? What sort of stories?
How has it been in the last 50 years you have lived?
Ah! My life at 50. My experience. How am I going to put it? Well, I
got into the university at the age of 21 in 1985; the University of
Calabar. And from that age of 21, death became my constant companion at
every turn.