Africa-Press – Nigeria. Former presidential spokesman, Garba Shehu, has said the founder of Boko Haram sect, Mohammed Yusuf and his successor, Abubakar Shekau, never nominated the late former President Muhammadu Buhari as the group’s negotiator.
Contrary to widespread belief, Shehu said the terrorist group had consistently denounced and threatened Buhari.
Dismissing claims of former President Goodluck Jonathan that the sect nominated Buhari as its negotiator to interface with the Federal government, Shehu said the late former president once “survived a bomb attack on his convoy in Kaduna in 2014” which was linked to the group.
In a statement issued on Friday, Shehu insisted that Jonathan’s claim was “false and misleading.”
Shehu recalled that at the time, the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) publicly denied Buhari’s alleged nomination through a statement by its then National Secretary, Engr. Buba Galadima, who stressed that the retired general had no knowledge of any such appointment.
He explained that the speculation originated from a faction of Boko Haram led by one Abu Mohammed Ibn Abdulaziz, who staged a press conference in Maiduguri in 2012, naming Buhari and some northern elders as preferred mediators.
“Shekau himself disowned the claim and said Abdulaziz had no mandate to speak for the group,” Shehu said
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