By Stephen Davis
I read with interest Asari Dokubo’s comments published on
September 14 in the Daily Post.
Asari is quite correct in saying that he knows me well and
has met members of my family. In 2004, the Niger Delta
was aflame with conflict. Asari, Ateke Tom and Tompolo
were waging a fierce war against the Nigerian federal and
state governments. Many people had been killed.
Nigerian military were having trouble contending with
Asari’s guerrilla warfare. Small, highly mobile and heavily
armed militant forces in fast boats struck across the Niger
Delta targeting oil installations and military posts. Nigeria’s
oil output at one point dropped to as low as 600,000
barrels per day and on average was halved to one million
barrels per day.[b]By Stephen Davis
I read with interest Asari Dokubo’s comments published on
September 14 in the Daily Post.
Asari is quite correct in saying that he knows me well and
has met members of my family. In 2004, the Niger Delta
was aflame with conflict. Asari, Ateke Tom and Tompolo
were waging a fierce war against the Nigerian federal and
state governments. Many people had been killed.
Nigerian military were having trouble contending with
Asari’s guerrilla warfare. Small, highly mobile and heavily
armed militant forces in fast boats struck across the Niger
Delta targeting oil installations and military posts. Nigeria’s
oil output at one point dropped to as low as 600,000
barrels per day and on average was halved to one million
barrels per day.[/b]By Stephen Davis
I read with interest Asari Dokubo’s comments published on
September 14 in the Daily Post.
Asari is quite correct in saying that he knows me well and
has met members of my family. In 2004, the Niger Delta
was aflame with conflict. Asari, Ateke Tom and Tompolo
were waging a fierce war against the Nigerian federal and
state governments. Many people had been killed.
Nigerian military were having trouble contending with
Asari’s guerrilla warfare. Small, highly mobile and heavily
armed militant forces in fast boats struck across the Niger
Delta targeting oil installations and military posts. Nigeria’s
oil output at one point dropped to as low as 600,000
barrels per day and on average was halved to one million
barrels per day.

This was a devastating blow to Nigeria’s economy and the
operations of the major international oil companies. Apart
from the economic impact, communities were suffering
from the conflict with many innocent people killed in
military efforts to purge the communities of militants.
My wife and I were living in Port Harcourt and, in 2004, I
explored the idea of a peace deal with an Ijaw friend, Von
Kemedi. As an Ijaw, he knew Asari who was also Ijaw. Von
was able to make contact with Asari who agreed to meet
with me.
Von and I subsequently travelled through the swamps in a
speed boat to Opurata village to see the damage to
villages before transferring to a canoe that we paddled to
another village from where we were met by Asari’s men in
another fast boat. With a blindfold on we were taken to
another island where we waited until another boat escorted
us to Asari’s camp. A vigorous discussion took place that
night surrounded by Asari’s well-armed fighters. By the
end of the night, the foundation of a peace deal has been
set down.
I subsequently took the peace proposal to President
Olusegun Obasanjo and found him ready and willing to
support peace and disarmament. The deal also
encompassed demobilisation and a programme to
reintegrate the militants back into the communities. This
required a skills training programme which President
Obasanjo supported. A final essential element was weapons
surrender and destruction. The protocol used was that set
down by the UN and was agreed by both sides.
At the Villa
I stayed in close contact with Asari by satellite phone each
evening around 5pm. We worked out the details of the
peace process. The first step was a ceasefire. The ceasefire
was set in place on September 8, 2004, but in the
following days was broken three times and each time it was
the Nigerian military that broke the ceasefire. Even when
under fire during a ceasefire breach Asari, honoured his
word and withdrew, firing only for self-protection.
To complete the peace deal, President Obasanjo directed
me to oversee the extraction of Asari and his key
commanders in September 2004. I travelled to the Niger
Delta with a handful of SSS men headed by Fubara Duke, an
Ijaw man known to Asari and trusted by President
Obasanjo.
At 1am on September 29, 2004 Asari, and his commanders
met us at Abonnema Landing in the Niger Delta and we
proceeded to Port Harcourt airport where we boarded a
plane at dawn to take us to Abuja and direct to President
Obasanjo in the Cabinet Room. That day was punctuated
with amazing revelations as Asari recounted events that led
him and his men to defy the government and launch a
guerrilla style campaign.
Asari always kept his word to me. He gave me an
undertaking on the ceasefire and kept it even in the face of
breaches by the military. When it came to time for
weapons surrender, he asked me how many weapons I
wanted him to surrender. I said, ‘ Asari you have 3,000 men,
so I want 3,000 weapons.’
Asari gave a commitment to hand over 3,000 guns, 100
general purpose machine guns and some rocket launchers
which were subsequently destroyed in a series of public
destructions to UN standards overseen by the Army at Bori
Military Camp in Port Harcourt in mid-November 2004.
President Obasanjo kept his word and on October 1, 2004
the peace accord was announced and Asari and his
commanders returned to the Niger Delta.
Asari is correct is saying I never paid him anything. I never
paid anyone and no one paid me either by way of funds or
favours. President Obasanjo did not offer to pay me for the
Niger Delta peace accord and I did not seek payment. The
peace deal was built on trust. I went to Asari’s camp
unarmed and without any security.
Asari and his key commanders travelled with me and the
small SSS contingent totally unarmed. We trusted each
other with our lives and that built trust. There can be no
peace without trust. Without trust, there is merely a
ceasefire which will eventually be broken and the fighting
resume.
Asari said in his interview with the Daily Post that
President Obasanjo broke his word. I am not so sure of
that. What I think Asari may be referring to is the
demobilisation and skills training that did not materialise
after the peace accord. Funds were to be set aside to train
the ex-militants for employment and to reintegrate them
back into their communities. This phase of the work was to
be undertaken by the state governors.
By March 2005, a full six months had passed without any
sign of training and reintegration. It was no surprise then
to find 200 Niger Delta ex-militants had been recruited by
foreign mercenaries to participate in a coup attempt in
Equatorial Guinea. The ex-militants were intercepted as
they departed Warri in a ship bound for Guinea. They had
each been promised $5,000 and an AK47.
Had the promised skills training and reintegration been
implemented, these young men probably would not have
agreed to join the coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea. So
Asari is right but it was more likely that the governors
were not sincere and not former President Obasanjo. It was
the governors that had armed, promoted and used the
gangs for political purposes in much the same way that
former Governor Modu Sheriff was alleged to have done in
Borno State..
It was this failure to honour the agreement to demobilise
by providing skills training and reintegration that fuelled
discontent and provided the conditions that formed MEND
which added bombing and kidnapping to its mode of
operation.
Contrary to Asari’s understanding, former President
Obasanjo did not bring me to Nigeria on my recent trip to
seek the release of the Chibok girls or for any other
purpose. Nor did President Jonathan or anyone else. I came
to Nigeria in April this year to seek the release of the
Chibok girls at my own expense and of my own volition
because I could see no progress on the release of the
kidnapped girls.
Girls horrifying rape
While Asari may not believe any girls were kidnapped, let
me assure you that hearing the stories of some girls who
have escaped from Boko Haram camps is a sobering
experience. There are many girls who have been kidnapped
apart from the girls from the Chibok school.
The kidnapping of girls by Boko Haram has been going on
for at least a year. Initially Boko Haram kidnapped girls
because the fighters could not go back home to their
wives. They used the kidnapped girls. Girls tell how they
were raped every day, week after week.
One girl was raped every day, sometimes several times a
day by groups of men. Some did not survive the ordeal. The
escaped girls tell harrowing stories of rape and abuse. They
are traumatised and require medical treatment and
counselling. These girls are testament to the horrifying
truth about the kidnappings.

But the Chibok kidnappings were only the start of my
recent journey to Nigeria. It soon became apparent the
(alleged) sponsors did not want any interference in their
plan. The “political Boko Haram” which (allegedly) started
out as Sheriff’s ECOMOG (so named after the military
peace keeping forces operating in Liberia at that time
because an SDP – Social Democratic Party- candidate was
protected from an angry mob in Bama by a group of youths
supporting the SDP) that targeted his political opponents
in the 2003 and 2007 elections have since mutated into the
Boko Haram we see today that terrorises through
beheadings, butchering innocent villagers, bombing
innocent people at shopping malls and in churches, raping
and kidnapping.
It is true that Sheriff fell-out with Yusuf and the allegation
stands that when the military captured Yusuf in late July
2009 and handed him over to the police in Borno State, he
was allegedly executed on Sheriff’s instruction. Thus the
root of the perception that Sheriff cannot be a sponsor but
a hated enemy of Boko Haram. But the core of the old
Yusufiya is no longer part of Boko Haram.
Boko Haram is a mutation of political Boko Haram and
Shekau’s Ansaru. The Yusufiya grew out of the Izala
movement and had great respect for Izala. Boko Haram now
beheads Izala followers. The “slaughterers” work with the
political assassins and suicide bombers.
The sponsors of Boko Haram do not care how many
innocent Nigerians are slaughtered, how many women are
raped, how many girls and boys are kidnapped, how many
villages are plundered. I have met too many victims to say,
“It is not my problem”.
We are each diminished if we allow such crimes against our
fellow citizens to persist. The Nigerian military is
diminished if it uses Boko Haram tactics to address the
problem. Evil will flourish and triumph if good men and
women do nothing.
Many Nigerian politicians have said little and done nothing
to curb the slaughter of Nigerians that is being supported
by the sponsors. While fathers die to protect their
daughters and wives are raped and butchered the sponsors
of Boko Haram are accorded privileges and protection.
They fly in private jets and are accorded military protection.
Are the sponsors of Boko Haram so far above the law?
Have the citizens of Nigeria lost the right to bring these
men to justice? Who will stand up for the poor and
oppressed who are being slaughtered and raped in their
hundreds? By the grace of God we trust that good men and
women will stand up and justice will prevail.

Souce: www.vanguardngr.com/2014/09/when-i-met-asari-and-agreed-a-peace-deal-stephen-davis/