Dirty Diamonds Of Boko Haram Part 1 by Eze Eke

had put in the phone call to the secure line of a friend at
Military Intelligence headquarters and left the message on his
voice mail, the last thing Alex had expected was a swift visit from
the top brass who ran the entire department.
    “What is an out of work, ex-Army officer
doing in the luxury suite of one of the most expensive hotels in
the country” asked the Colonel in his usual no-nonsense manner.
“And what is he doing calling a secure military line he should have
forgotten about six months ago?”
    Alex took a deep breath and let it out. “It’s
a long story, sir”
    “I suppose it is” said the colonel completely
unimpressed. “Mind enlightening me?”
    “Yes sir. Two days ago, a man by the name of
Alhaji Mustapha Usman came to see me at my place in Lagos. How he
knew so much about me and where exactly to find me, I have no idea.
He’s the CEO of Goldfield Holdings, ever heard of him before?”
    “Yes, he’s a northern billionaire business
mogul and the company has both solid and liquid mineral mining
interests. He normally likes to keep a low key profile but he has
lots of high powered connections both political and military. What
did he want?”
    Alex began to talk. He left nothing out, not
even the contents and purpose of the small suitcase he carried.
When he was done, the colonel was silent for a long minute.
    “Have you mentioned this to anyone else at
all, apart from me?” asked the colonel finally.
    “No, sir. just you”
    “Good, let’s keep it that way” said the
colonel and turned to look out the window again.
    “You mean you won’t do anything about
this?”
    “I didn’t say that” said the older man
without looking at him.
    “Then what are you saying, sir? We can’t just
allow that kind of money fall into the hands of those terrorists,
that would be practically sponsoring them. And then there’s El
Soldat who Military Intelligence has been after him for so
long”
    The colonel sighed tiredly. “You’ve been away
from the game for too long, lieutenant, and a lot has changed in
that time but not for the better. Firstly, the Army is now battling
a highly tactical and mobilized Boko Haram on every front and they
have our backs to the wall. The kidnapping of those chibok girls
was just the first to attract public attention on a massive scale
and expose our helplessness, there have been so many incidents like
it recently. Those militants have overrun almost every key city and
town in the north-east, occupied the territory and mounted their
wretched flags in plain sight. In Bornu in particular, we only hold
the main city and a few key towns around along with their villages,
but none of them are completely secure. Even as we speak now, the
battle to keep those terrorists at a safe distance from Bama is
being fought and the Army has been losing for a straight two days.
Things are so bad that we’ve lost contact with the troops in
certain areas, and then there’s this talk of a powerful new jamming
equipment Boko Haram is now using to interfere with our
communication signals. These are terrorists that are supposed to
hate technology and they’ve got the best! Lastly, these terrorists
have now gone into the kidnapping business full time. Families of
the rich and powerful are their main targets and they now go out of
their way to launch surprise attacks deep into secure territories
to capture their victims. The average ransom demand per head ranges
from half a million to one million US dollars and several top
politicians have already been hit both here, in Niger republic and
Cameroon, It’s not public knowledge yet but the deputy Prime
Minister of Cameroon had his wife and children kidnapped from his
hometown just last month and the place was nowhere near the
troubled border regions. He had to pay three million US dollars to
get them back. Even our own government has been secretly
negotiating to buy peace and the release of the kidnapped
chibok girls. The ransom demand for the girls,