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Nigeria: Senator Arraigned on Terror Charges
Rufai Ahmed Alkali, a spokesman for the ruling party, did not respond to requests for comment.
Konduga on Monday also implicated a former Nigerian ambassador, now dead, as well as a former governor in Nigeria’s northeast in Boko Haram’s creation.
Konduga told journalists that Boko Haram expelled him some time ago, suggesting he and his supposed political masters have fallen out of favor with an organization that has splintered into factions, with one becoming increasingly violent and strident. The sect has several spokesmen and Konduga himself hadn’t given any statement on the group’s behalf for some time.
“The group suspended me because they thought I was an agent of the State Security Service,” Konduga said.
Boko Haram has splintered into three factions, with one wing increasingly willing to kill as it maintains contact with terrorist groups in North Africa and Somalia, diplomats and security sources say.
With that wing viewing a wide variety of people and institutions as potential targets, even politicians with ties to Boko Haram can no longer consider themselves safe. Politicians in Maiduguri, the city that is Boko Haram’s spiritual home, and other places in the northeast now surround themselves with security and live in apparent fear of the sect.
Politicians in Nigeria long have been rumored to have ties to militants. In the country’s southern Niger Delta, where foreign oil firms extract an estimated 2.4 million barrels of crude a day, politicians hand out Kalashnikov rifles to those who help rig elections in their favor. Many of those weapons and gunmen became the part of the militant and criminal gangs kidnapping oil workers and targeting pipelines.
