By Ishaya Ibrahim, News Editor
A Nigerian journalist, David Hundeyin, has through Open-Source Investigation, identified suspected financiers of Boko Haram, and some of them are allies of President Muhammadu Buhari. They even pose in a group photograph with him in Aso Rock. Shockingly, one of them runs a Burea De Change (BDC) which the CBN recently flagged as a possible terrorism conduit.
Open-source is an investigation technique of collecting, analyzing and making sense of data that are publicly sourced.
The report done by Hundeyin for the West Africa Weekly traced the origin of Islamic radicalism in Nigeria and how Boko Haram became a global nightmare that appears difficult to be defeated.
At the core of this Jihad are two men – Ahmed Idris Nasreddin, founder of NASCO, the makers of Cornflakes, and Sheikh Abubakar Mahmud Gumi, founder of the Izala Islamic sect and father to controversial Sheikh Ahmed Gumi. They are both dead, but their footprints leave with us. While Nasreddin died in March 2021, Sheikh Gumi died as far back as 1992.
The story is titled: ‘Cornflakes for Jihad: The Boko Haram Origin Story.’
In the report, Hundeyin published communications between Nigeria and the United Nations, and also documents from the US Treasury Department and also Wikileaks to show that Nasreddin was a terror financier.
The report also shows that the older Gumi, as far back as 1955, struck an alliance with Saudi Arabia to propagate its own version of Islam which is terror inclined. And some members of his founded Izala, have been the backbone of Islamic radicalism since early 2000 which has now metamorphosed into Boko Haram.
For instance, Hundeyin said in the report: “The real proof of Nasreddin’s double life, however, comes from the US Treasury Department which publishes a comprehensive account of how he launders and moves money around the world for terrorist entities. Want to hear the real kicker? Nasreddin has been funding and laundering money for none other than GSPC – the Algerian terrorist group which Yakubu Katsina and Shahru Haruna are also involved with at the exact same time.”
Yakubu Katsina and Haruna Shahru are members of the Izala sect, with links to GSPC, a terror jihadist terror network in Algeria that Nasreddin has been linked to as one of its financiers.
Hundeyin quoted a communication between the Nigerian government and the UN in 2005 saying: “Alhaji Shahru Haruna, in the Nigerian government’s own words, is a GSPC agent who funds the activities of people like Kabiru Sokoto by laundering proceeds from smuggled goods. He too was arrested and held on terror financing charges. Somehow he too, is not only a free man today, but a powerful one in his own right too.”
See the full report from West Africa Weekly: https://westafricaweekly.substack.com/p/cornflakes-for-jihad-the-boko-haram