Jonathan’s statement on Buhari politically motivated – Garba Shehu

….Boko Haram did not nominate Buhari as mediator

Garba Shehu, former spokesman to late former President Muhammadu Buhari, has dismissed claims by former President Goodluck Jonathan, that Buhari was nominated as mediator by the insurgent group, Boko Haram.

Shehu, who responded on his official X handle, advised Jonathan to look for another story to tell Nigerians if he wants to be “President in 2027”.

Shehu declared that the late President himself had denied a similar story in 2014 that he was nominated to meditate between the terrorist group and the federal government.

Recall that former President Jonathan had at the launch of the book written by Lucky Irabor, a former Chief of Defence Staff, said the dreaded Islamic terrorists once nominated the late President as their mediator.

“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.”

Shehu said, “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.”

He also recalled that 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 him, “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.”

Shehu noted that “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.”

Shehu recalled a statement issued by the then National Secretary of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), Buba Galadima, where he stated that “Buhari, the national leader of the CPC said he was 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.”

“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.”