By Muhammad Mamman
Former presidential spokesman, Garba Shehu, has dismissed claims by former President Goodluck Jonathan that Boko Haram once nominated the late former President Muhammadu Buhari as its negotiator.
In a statement, Shehu clarified that neither the group’s founder, Mohammed Yusuf, nor his successor, Abubakar Shekau, ever made such a nomination. Instead, he noted, the terrorist organisation had repeatedly denounced and even threatened Buhari.
Shehu recalled that Buhari narrowly escaped a bomb attack on his convoy in Kaduna in 2014 — an incident widely attributed to Boko Haram.
He further explained that when a faction of the group, led by Abu Mohammed Ibn Abdulaziz, named Buhari and some northern elders as potential mediators during a 2012 press conference in Maiduguri, the claim was swiftly rejected.
According to Shehu, the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), Buhari’s former political party, publicly disowned the nomination at the time through its then National Secretary, Engr. Buba Galadima, who confirmed that Buhari had no knowledge of the matter.
“Shekau himself later disowned the claim, saying Abdulaziz had no authority to speak for the group,” Shehu added.
