Former media aide to ex-President Muhammadu Buhari, Mallam Garba Shehu, has 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.
In a statement issued Friday night, Shehu refuted Jonathan’s assertion, pointing out that in 2014, Buhari averted a bomb attack on his life by Boko Haram in Kaduna, in which his personal staff were injured to varying degrees.
The statement read, “We are compelled to make a response to a terrible statement made about 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 the 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 as president focused on combating Boko Haram and restoring security in Nigeria, putting him in direct contrast to the terrorist group’s commander.
It stated that, contrary to popular belief at the time, Boko Haram had nominated Buhari as the mediator between them and the Federal Government of Nigeria in the proposed peace talks; however, 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 was not aware of the appointment:
“As of 10pm yesterday (Thursday) when I spoke with him, he said he has not even heard about it,” Galadima said.
Furthermore, the party secretary told reporters that “he (Buhari) said the whole thing 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.”
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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 the subject, the then-CPC national press secretary, Mr. Rotimi Fashekun, now deceased, chastised President Goodluck Jonathan and the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for seizing on Buhari’s alleged nomination for political gain.
Fashekun described Buhari’s alleged nomination as “the latest gambit in the desire of this organically corrupt PDP-led Federal Government to divert the attention of the unsuspecting Nigerian public from the ongoing 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 magnetize the very best across the ethno-religious boundaries within the Nigerian nation-space.”
He 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 highlighted Boko Haram’s three categories and said that the PDP-led government is funding one of them.
“From recollection of events of the last two years, there are three variants of Boko Haram: the original Boko Haram that is at daggers drawn with the Nigerian authority for the extrajudicial 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. Goodluck 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 also cited discoveries provided by the 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.”
