The Borno State Governor, Kashim Shettima has accused former President Goodluck Jonathan of sweeping the report by an investigative panel on the abduction of the Chibok Girls ‘under the carpet, describing the book as mere fiction devoid of facts.
According to him, the book is simply a fiction designed to pass guilty verdicts to anyone but himself, with respect to the open failures of his administration to rescue our daughters and in tackling the Boko Haram challenge.
In a statement issued by his Special Adviser on Communications and Strategy, Malam Isa Gusau on Wednesday, Shettima stated that the former President failed to publish the report in his book titled, ‘My Transition Hours’ which was launched on Tuesday.
He said this in reaction to Chapter Four of the book titled, ‘The Chibok School Girls Affair’.
He described the alleged omission of the report as a “clever attempt to sweep under the carpet, incontrovertible facts surrounding the April 14, 2014 Chibok abduction”.
The statement read in part, “The whole of Tuesday night, I took the pains of reading His Excellency, former President Goodluck Jonathan’s book, My transition hours, from the first to the 177th page.
“I took particular interest in Chapter Four (the Chibok School Girls Affair) which has 42 paragraphs written on pages 27 to 36. I was amused that despite admitting in paragraph 15, that he had (in May 2014) constituted a Presidential Fact-Finding Committee under Brigadier General Ibrahim Sabo and many others “to investigate” the Chibok abduction, former President Jonathan refused to mention any part or whole of the findings by that panel which had submitted a highly investigative report submitted to him on Friday, June 20, 2014 after the panel held investigative meetings with the then Chiefs of Defense Staff, Army Staff, Air Staff, the DG, DSS and IGP, met all security heads in Borno, visited Chibok, met with parents of abducted schoolgirls, met surviving students, interrogated officials of the school and the supervising ministry of education, interrogated officials of WAEC and analyzed all correspondences.
“What has become very clear is that the former President decided to sit on facts in his custody while he published, in an elementary standard, a book of fiction designed to pass guilty verdicts to anyone but himself, with respect to the open failures of his administration to rescue our daughters and in tackling the Boko Haram challenge”.
Governor Shettima further stated that “At the end, the panel submitted it’s report directly to President Jonathan on Friday, the 20th of June, 2014 in Abuja. President Jonathan has refused to make public the findings submitted to him.
“I was expecting the findings in his book but he has deliberately swept that report under the carpet”.
He also claimed that in page 31 of the book, the former president noted that the Boko Haram Insurgents wanted a Muslim President rather than himself who was a Christian.
He described the idea as laughable saying that it was clear to him after reading the book, that he (Jonathan) “still lives with poor understanding of issues under his presidency”
“The insurgents actually began their deadliest attacks in Borno under the regime of late President Umaru Musa Yar’adua, a Muslim from northern Nigeria.
“We know for a fact that as vicious cycle of evil, Boko Haram fighters do not care about the religion of their targeted victims. They attack Mosques and churches.
“They are lunatics who regard anyone who doesn’t share their ideology as an infidel. So, I wonder how the former President didn’t take time to understand the biggest challenge under his presidency” Shettima said.
–Channels TV
