Nigeria needs Saudi Arabia ‘to stop Boko Haram’

The best way to end the Boko Haram insurgency is to involve clerics from Saudi Arabia, a lawyer who runs a school for orphans of the militants has said.

Mr. Zanna Bukar Mustapha, who owns a Maiduguri-based foundation, The Future Prowess, told Sunday Trust that leaders of Boko Haram belong to the Salafi movement with headquarters in the Islamic holy land.

He is sceptical about the involvement of the US and other Western powers in the attempt to end the insurgency which has claimed over 10,000 lives in five years, drawing global attention with the kidnap of over 200 schoolgirls from Chibok nearly three months ago.

The best way to end the insurrection, he said, is to bring clerics from outside Nigeria “who are of the same faith, who may have a better understanding of the faith which the insurgents believe in, so that they can sit with them. These clerics can find a way of engaging them, not with arms but academically, because they have very superior arguments in judgment, in knowledge and in what the doctrine stands for”.

Mustapha explained: “Muhammed Yusuf, (Abubakar) Shekau and all the rest are of the Salafi movement. And when you talk of Salafi, you have to go to Saudi Arabia to get them. When you get them, you can find an international organization to organize advanced contact that will bring the Salafis in Saudi Arabia to go to the prisons and meet the insurgents that are in the hands of the Federal Government of Nigeria.

“By the time the insurgents get a clear knowledge of what the Salafis stand for, you release one, two or three of them to go down to the leadership of the group. They can talk to the leadership and they would also see the girls that are now in captivity. They would therefore sit and discuss with their own people because they are not afraid of other sect members. Thereafter, they would come back to the government.

“From there, you go to the second stage of swapping the girls with the prisoners. They would tell you who and who they want government to release, and government can decide those to be released. That would also open another window of opportunity for the peace process.

“But where you are carrying guns, sending people to fight where they cannot even fight, you are even creating a sort of a mutiny within the military because there are fifth columnists within the military who don’t want the crisis to end. There is misunderstanding being imported into the insurgency that we don’t even know. But by the time you engage in these measures, and put the processes in order, all shall be well.”

The Future Prowess has a school in Maiduguri which has remained open despite the closure of most schools ─ and has not been attacked by the militants who are burning down schools and killing students.

Mustapha said he earned the trust of the militants because of his openness.

He said: “I have an Islamic foundation that caters for the well-being of orphans which cuts across various divides and that does not in any way exclude the insurgents’ family members, widowed and orphaned in the crises. Having them is a leverage.

“As you know, we have the Future Prowess widows who are part of the Parent Teachers Association, which often guides the making of the school curriculum.

“We had problems in the curriculum at the early stage of the school when insurgents’ wives complained of the inclusion of western education in the curriculum. We changed it to be ‘conventional education’ instead of ‘western education’ because when you say western in Arabic, it means pagan (garbi).”