‘Sudan has no link with Boko Haram’

With the arrest of Aminu Sadiq Ogwuche, mastermind of the Nyanya bombing in Sudan, series of attacks by the Boko Haram and the abduction of the Chibok girls, there are allegations that your country is a training ground for the group. What do you have to say? This is obviously not true; Sudan is not […]

With the arrest of Aminu Sadiq Ogwuche, mastermind of the Nyanya bombing in Sudan, series of attacks by the Boko Haram and the abduction of the Chibok girls, there are allegations that your country is a training ground for the group. What do you have to say?
This is obviously not true; Sudan is not a training ground for the Boko Haram people. I don’t think we have any common denomination according to the ideal they preach, when they talk about their opposition to the western education or whatever that is going on. I don’t think there is any kind of affinity between the Sudanese and Boko Haram sect. We obviously deny that totally; there is no linkage between Boko Haram and Sudan.
And training ground for what? I don’t see any reason for that because we have got almost one hundred and one countries sending their citizens to the African University in Sudan and so many other Islamic countries and we never heard of such a thing. No country has raised any dust about what is going on because there is nothing of such. I personally heard of Boko Haram when I came to Nigeria. We have no idea of Boko Haram at the time when I was still in Sudan because I have been in the government for about 15 years.
Therefore we constantly try to convince the people that Sudan has nothing to do with Boko Haram. It can never be a training ground for such radicals because we ourselves are suffering from such things.  We have got insurgency going on in Sudan and some faction attacking government of Sudan on different parts of the country and obviously we won’t encourage that because we know that such a thing will have effect.
Therefore, Sudan is no doubt completely against this and when Nigeria now asked for the arrest of this person in Sudan, it was very quickly done because we believe we have always been against terrorism and condemning it and we can never approve of it.
Is Aminu Ogwuche a student in Sudan and how does he get Sudanese visa to enter your country?
Well, when we investigated and check our records here, we found out that he didn’t come through our embassy to get a visa. We also found out that he has British passport and that he used to be in Britain. He hasn’t gone through our channel because he has a different passport. We didn’t know how he got to Sudan but definitely it is not through us.
There is also an allegation against the Sudanese government of sponsoring and supplying ammunitions to Boko Haram?
Definitely Sudan will never do that because these things will boomerang.  We are fighting weapons too in my country let alone giving people support or weapons. Where do we get it because we have our own problems. Our relationship is far and it has always been so. As I said earlier there are so many Sudanese in Nigeria who are married here and we cannot expose them to any kind of risk because if this thing takes place, obviously it means that there will be trouble and we don’t want that. We never approve it, we won’t encourage it and as I said we are unequivocally against terrorism. We cannot support it whether with weapons or any logistics.
Is it true that the Sudanese president has his origin in northern Nigeria and that as a result of that his government is supporting insurgency to make the country ungovernable for the present administration?   
That is not true. We are not talking about origin here or anything. There are many people from other countries who are born in Sudan and became prominent like so many Nigerians who have become very prominent in every aspect of the society. We never trace that and we don’t think of it as something that justifies our intervention in Nigeria through such people.
What has this got to do with the sect if the president had origin in Nigeria, his heart would be more with Nigeria rather than with the sect that seeks to destroy the unity of Nigeria. I don’t think that make sense.
How do you checkmate Nigerian students in your country and what is the government of Sudan doing to monitor their activities now?     
We check them especially when we give them the visa. We definitely check them through our offices here and when they get to Sudan, they go to recognized universities and they have codes of conduct in those schools. They follow up the students to know what they are doing. Of course there may be a few who can deviate which we find in every part of the world. We do track these students.
The other thing is the regional linkage with religion. I want to say that we have a Canadian university in Sudan where there are about 700 Nigerian students who are mostly Christians and we are not against that. Education for us is something universal. Our students are studying in every part of the world and we also have students who came to study from different parts of the world and we don’t look at these things.   We feel that education is a right for everybody and does not have to be this or that.
What impact would all the allegations have on the relationship between Sudan and Nigeria?
It has not affected our relationship in any way because I have met with number of senior people in government and we talked about this and they are appreciative of the help that we provided in arresting Ogwuche. On the contrary, we think this is going to cement the relationship even more because we are also exposed to some many challenges in some parts of Sudan and we don’t want Nigeria to be one of the havens for these people. And so if we have done this, that means it is a goodwill on our side and therefore we expect the same thing from Nigeria. This is the kind of agreement that has taken place. Now as far as the bilateral relations are concerned, only last February we had the meeting of the Bi-National Commission between the two countries which took place in Sudan and we signed agreements in 11 areas on how we are going to promote the relationship between both countries.  There are proposed visits now which will take place very soon among the people who are responsible for our relationship.
What is your message for Nigerians in this trying moment?
Nigerians should think of Nigeria above all other things. They should think Nigeria in totality. We have suffered from these kinds of differences in the past in my country and we hope that Nigeria remains intact because if Nigeria is strong, the entire Africa continent will be strong; if any kind of problem takes a different dimension in Nigeria, it will have an effect on other countries in the continent. What I hope for is to see unity in Nigeria so that things don’t fall apart as Chinua Achebe said in his book. We want Nigeria to be intact to remain as one united country because in the unity of Nigeria lies the future of Africa as a major country in the continent.