The governor of Borno State, Babagana Zulum, has dismissed Omoyele Sowore’s charges about supposed billions spent on Boko Haram reintegration and the arbitrary detention of #EndBadGovernance demonstrators as “pure imagination”.
In a series of social media posts, Sowore, the African Action Congress presidential candidate for 2023, accused Zulum of running a torture chamber known as “The Crack FC” in Maiduguri, where he allegedly held demonstrators for almost a year.
One of his posts read, “The heartless Governor of Borno, Prof. Babagana Umara Zulum, maintains a torture chamber with his security outfit ‘The Crack FC’ in Maiduguri; that’s where he kept his #EndBadGovernance victims for more than a year! Wicked!”
In another post, Sowore, the publisher of Sahara Reporters, alleged that Zulum had jailed minors over their involvement in the protests while allocating billions to Boko Haram “repenters”.
“This is not only unlawful but shameful. While Zulum allocates billions of naira to Boko Haram ‘repenters’, he criminalises and imprisons young citizens whose only ‘crime’ is demanding accountability and good governance,” Sowore wrote.
Reacting on Saturday, the governor’s Senior Technical Assistant on Print and Digital Communications, Abdulrahman Bundi, dismissed the claims as baseless and misleading.
“To be sincere with you, these are just pure imaginations of Sowore. There is nothing like that existing. It is baseless misinformation to say the governor ordered people to be held for a year. What does the governor have to do with the #EndBadGovernance protest? It is not even a state government affair—the protest is against the federal government,” Bundi said.
Speaking on the allegations of billions being spent to rehabilitate Boko Haram terrorists, Bundi clarified that the Deradicalisation, Rehabilitation, and Reintegration (DRR) programme is a multi-stakeholder initiative aimed primarily at assisting victims of insurgency.
“Let us be clear: the DRR is not just about Boko Haram terrorists. It is a multi-stakeholder approach to resolving the crisis in Borno. It is about bringing peace and rehabilitating those who were overrun, forcefully abducted, or engaged by Boko Haram. In fact, it focuses more on the victims of the crisis,” he explained.
He called on the public to access the DRR policy document online to avoid falling victim to misinformation.
“The DRR document is public. People should access it online, read it, and understand what it contains. You don’t have to sit down and castigate something you don’t even know,” he added.
