Man detained in SSS solitary confinement ‘for helping Boko Haram’s female victims’

[SUNDAY TIMES OF LONDON] An aid worker who helps girls who have escaped imprisonment by Boko Haram has been imprisoned without charge by Nigeria’s secret police.

The move has reignited claims that the country’s senior political figures are giving clandestine support to the Islamist militants.

Mustapha Maidugu, a humanitarian worker who was gathering video testimony of the girls’ ordeal inside a Boko Haram camp, has been held in solitary confinement in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, for more than two months.

It is believed he was arrested because of his ties with Dr Stephen Davis, an Australian hostage negotiator and close friend of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who has repeatedly accused powerful Nigerian figures of bankrolling Boko Haram.

Davis, the former canon emeritus at Coventry Cathedral, alleges that Ali Modu Sheriff, the British-educated ex-governor of Borno state, uses Boko Haram as a proxy to gain control over oil-rich land straddling the borders of northern Nigeria, Chad and Cameroon.

Davis says the State Security Service (SSS) is now “doing the bidding” of Sheriff. The ex-governor and the SSS have reportedly denied the allegations.​

Maidugu’s incarceration comes amid a spate of attacks by female teenage suicide bombers in northern Nigeria, which have killed more than 80 people in recent weeks.

There are fears that at least some of these suicide bombers had been kidnapped by Boko Haram and were either brainwashed or blackmailed into committing the attacks.

Maidugu has lodged a formal legal appeal against his detention, according to court documents seen by The Sunday Times.

His lawyer, Baba Gana Shettima, says he is being held at the SSS’s headquarters.

Davis, who for the past eight years has helped the Nigerian government negotiate with the terrorists, says Maidugu is one of four aid workers he has worked with who have been arrested since he accused Sheriff of sponsoring Boko Haram.

“The SSS has arrested people who have been supporting girls who have been kidnapped, raped and abused but managed to escape from Boko Haram camps,” said Davis. In 2004 the Australian worked alongside Justin Welby, now the Archbishop of Canterbury, in helping to resolve conflicts between oil companies and local militias in the Niger Delta.

Davis said the security service was “interrogating these young men in order to intimidate the general population and ensure Sheriff is free to continue his sponsorship of Boko Haram”.

Shettima said: “Any person who has had contact with Stephen is being arrested.”

Sheriff, who studied finance at the London School of Business, is said to own a fleet of private jets and luxury cars.