By Johnbosco Agbakwuru, Abuja
Loyalists of former President Muhammadu Buhari, have faulted the claim by former President Goodluck Jonathan that the Boko Haram terrorists nominated Buhari to represent them in their negotiations with the then government.
Spokesman of the late President Buhari’s loyalists and former media aide to the President, Mallam Garba Shehu, told Jonathan to look for another story to tell Nigerians.
Shehu in a statement on Friday night debunked Jonathan’s claim, pointing out that in 2014, Buhari escaped a bomb attack on his life by Boko Haram in Kaduna, in which his personal staff suffered various degrees of injury.
The statement read: “We are compelled to make a response to a terrible statement made on the late president Muhammadu Buhari by his predecessor in office, President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, to the effect that Boko Haram had nominated him to represent them in a dialogue with government.
“If this is a campaign statement towards his bid for the presidency in 2027, we want to say to him that “Mr. Jonathan, you are making a false start.”
“Muhammed Yusuf or Abubakar Shekau, the deceased leaders of the Boko Haram terrorist group, never nominated Muhammadu Buhari for any such role. In fact, Shekau routinely denounced and threatened Buhari, and their ideologies were in direct opposition.
“In 2014, Muhammadu Buhari escaped a bomb attack on his life by Boko Haram in Kaduna, in which his personal staff suffered various degrees of injury.”
According to the statement, Buhari’s campaigns focused on fighting Boko Haram and restoring security to Nigeria whenever he became president, putting him in direct opposition to the terrorist group’s leader.
It said contrary to the news making the rounds in those years that the radical Islamist extremist –Boko Haram had nominated General Muhammadu Buhari as the mediator between them and the Federal Government of Nigeria in the proposed peace talk, the retired Military General denied knowledge of his nomination.
“In a statement issued by the then National Secretary of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), Engr Buba Galadima, Buhari, the national leader of the CPC said he not aware of the appointment:
“As at 10pm yesterday (Thursday) when I spoke with him, he said he has not even heard about it,” Galadima said.
Continuing, the party secretary told reporters that “he (Buhari) said the whole thing to him, is just speculation. And since nobody has contacted him as a person for him to even know who is behind what, and what the motives of the whole exercise are, he would not speak to the press.”
The statement further said: “He revealed that Buhari, the 2011 presidential candidate of the CPC, further told him that as an elder statesman and a patriotic Nigerian, he will continue to pray until peace and tranquillity return to Nigeria.
“What led to the misleading information was that a faction of the terrorist group, possibly sponsored by Buhari’s opponents, staged a press conference in Maiduguri, Borno State, through a certain Abu Mohammed Ibn Abdulaziz, who claimed to be the Boko Haram commander in charge of Southern and Northern Borno, saying that the sect would prefer the former military leader, General Muhammadu Buhari, ex-Yobe State governor and the then Senator, now late Bukar Abba Ibrahim, first Nigerian Minister of Petroleum, Shettima Ali Monguno, also late, Chairman of the Presidential Committee on Insecurity in the North-East, Ambassador Gaji Gatimari, and other prominent members of the Borno Emirate to mediate between them and the federal government.
“Abdulaziz was roundly condemned by the leaders of Boko Haram who claimed that he had “no mandate of their leader, Imam Abubakar Shekau.”
Speaking on to the issue , the then CPC national publicity secretary, Mr. Rotimi Fashekun, now late, lambasted President Goodluck Jonathan and the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for latching on Buhari’s alleged nomination for political reasons.
Fashekun described Buhari’s purported nomination as “the latest gambit in the desire of this organically corrupt PDP-led Federal Government in diverting the attention of the unsuspecting Nigerian public from the on-going massive looting of their common patrimony.”
Fashekun also said: “Without any scintilla of equivocation, General Muhammadu Buhari has never been directly or remotely connected with any insurrection or insurgency against the Nigerian nation and her people.
“He remains the quintessential patriot that continues to magnetise the very best across the ethno-religious boundaries within the Nigerian nation-space.”
The party chieftain accused the PDP of being responsible for the growing insecurity in the country, insisting:
“As we have stated in an earlier communication, the (PDP), as a corporate entity, is the harbinger of the insecurity travails of the Nigerian people for the sole reason of ensuring perpetuity in governance.”
Fashekun listed the three categories of Boko Haram and alleged that the PDP-led government is sponsoring one of them.
“From recollection of events of the last two years, there are three variants of the Boko Haram: the original Boko Haram that is at daggers drawn with the Nigerian authority for the extra-judicial killing of their leader; the criminal Boko Haram that is involved in all criminality for economic reasons and of course, the most lethal of all, the Political Boko Haram, which this PDP-led Federal Government represents.
“The President, Dr, Good-luck Jonathan, had once alerted the nation of the ubiquitous presence of Boko Haram in his government, a fact aptly amplified by his erstwhile National Security Adviser, General Andrew Azazi.”
He further drew instances from the revelations made by State Security Service, saying: “Undoubtedly, the latest revelations by the State Security Services (SSS) on the complicity of the top echelon of the PDP leadership in Boko Haram activities aptly bear testimony of the noxious subterfuge to extirpate the essence of our nationhood.”
She in the statement concluded: “To win in 2027, Dr. Jonathan should look for a better story to tell Nigerians.”
The post Garba Shehu to Jonathan: Boko Haram didn’t nominate Buhari as mediator appeared first on Vanguard News.
