Monday 22 September 2014
Euro MP Accuse APC Of Financing Boko Haram
A senior member of the European Parliament has accused APC of channelling the parliament's financial aid to Boko Haram in the North-east of Nigeria.
Obermayr also called on EC to investigate alleged concerns over the party's financial and political allegiance with the terror group.
Obermayr of Austrian Freedom Party, currently the most popular political party in Austria, made the statements in a press release issued last week and covered widely by the European press.
Obermayr has been working closely with Stand for Peace, a Muslim-Jewish interfaith organisation dedicated to countering extremism and promoting social and religious cohesion.
He has also called on EU election observers to closely scrutinise the links between the APC and Boko Haram in the run up to the 2015 presidential election.
He said: "In Nigeria's case, a large proportion of the subsidies from Brussels are used in the north of the country. The federal states of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa in the extreme North-east of the country are precisely the areas in which Boko Haram's campaign of terror is largely tolerated by the authorities. The aforementioned sub-republics are governed by the All Progressive Congress (APC)."
In the statement, Obermayr said all further European Parliament cooperation and funding to Nigeria should be subjected to the findings of a report into the close relationship between political parties and terrorist groups in the country, suggesting that all development aid should be immediately suspended if any wrongdoing is exposed.
Turning to individuals in APC, Obermayr raised the United States (US) Embassy memo, which alleged that former vice-president and 2015 presidential hopeful, Atiku Abubukar, received money from Al-Qaeda to "destabilise the south of the country" and the recent defection of Femi Fani-Kayode from the APC because of their "clear Islamist agenda and sympathies with Boko Haram".
Further in the statement that highlighted widespread concern ahead of the 2015 presidential elections, he said: "Even the most senior man in the APC, former Nigerian head of state and presidential candidate, Mohammadu Buhari, was quoted in the British newspaper The Guardian back in 2001 calling for sharia law to be introduced throughout Nigeria, including the Christian-dominated south."
The announcement from Obermayr and Stand for Peace follows a similar call from Andrew Rosindell MP of the UK parliament, for an inquiry into the relationship between members of the APC and Boko Haram.
Stand for Peace has long investigated Boko Haram and their international financial and political connections, previously exposing links between the extremist sect and the controversial UK-based charity the "Al-Muntada Trust".
"Unfortunately, in many cases, a lot of Europe's political decision-makers are negligent when it comes to contacts and financial aid for associations and political parties, which in reality act as camouflage organisations and as a result often open the doors to European institutions for radical Islamist groups," was the criticism voiced by Obermayr, who has already called on the EC for greater transparency on this issue in a parliamentary survey.
Source- allafrica.com
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