Former Presidential Spokesman, Garba Shehu, has dismissed claims by ex-President Goodluck Jonathan that the late President Muhammadu Buhari was once nominated by Boko Haram to mediate on their behalf in talks with the Federal Government.
Shehu described Jonathan’s statement as “a terrible falsehood,” insisting that at no time did the insurgents nominate Buhari for such a role.
“Buhari’s campaigns were focused on fighting Boko Haram and restoring security to Nigeria, which put him in direct opposition to the terrorist group.
In fact, he narrowly escaped a bomb attack on his life by Boko Haram in Kaduna in 2014,” Shehu said in a statement.
He recalled that when the matter surfaced in 2011, the then Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) leadership, through its National Secretary, Buba Galadima, made it clear that Buhari had no knowledge of any such nomination.
According to Galadima, Buhari himself dismissed the report as “mere speculation.”
Shehu added that what led to the controversy was a press conference staged in Maiduguri by a certain Abu Mohammed Ibn Abdulaziz, who claimed to speak for Boko Haram but was later disowned by the group’s leaders for lacking the mandate of their late leader, Abubakar Shekau.
The former spokesman noted that the CPC’s late publicity secretary, Rotimi Fashekun, had at the time accused the then ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) of politicising the matter, alleging that the party used Buhari’s purported nomination as a diversion from what he called “massive looting of the nation’s resources.”
According to him, Fashekun further stressed that Buhari was “never directly or remotely connected with any insurrection against the Nigerian state,” and instead accused the PDP-led government of being complicit in the worsening insecurity.
Shehu therefore advised Jonathan to “look for a better story to tell Nigerians” as he prepares for his reported bid to return to the presidency in 2027.
Bello Wakili
