Former senior special assistant to ex-President Goodluck Jonathan,
Reno Omokri, has lambasted Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed for
saying Jonathan did nothing months after the abduction of Chibok Girls
by Boko Haram in April 2014, Daily Post reports.
Lai Mohammed in a statement yesterday scolded the Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG) group, stating that their use of ‘impudent’ language should “should have been reserved for those who did nothing in the first 500 days of the girls’ abduction”.
In a reaction on Tuesday titled ‘Lai Mohammed Manifests the Lie In
His Name’, Reno said Nigerians knew that Lai Mohammed was synonymous
with lying and it that it was no wonder that the Oby Ezekwesili led BBOG
were firing at him.
It reads: “To say that the Jonathan administration ‘did nothing’ to
rescue the Chibok girls is a lie that will not go unchallenged.
“I will now give a timeline of events to prove unequivocally that Lai
Mohammed is a liar and his words should henceforth be taken with a
pinch of salt by Nigerians and the international community.
“March 12, 2014: The then minister of state for education, Mr. Nyesom
Wike, wrote the Governors of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa and advised them
not to hold SSCE examinations in areas susceptible to the Boko Haram
insurgency. This letter, with reference number HMSE/FME/147/VOL.1/150
and titled: ‘Security challenges and the conduct of the 2014 WASSCE and
SSCE in Borno, Yobe and parts of Adamawa States’, is still available
today should Lai Mohammed wish to read it.
“April 14, 2014: Contrary to the advise given by the PDP led Federal
Government of President Goodluck Jonathan, the APC led Government of
Governor Kashim Shettima, for reasons best known to it, chose to ignore
that advise and held the SSCE examinations in Chibok, a mainly Christian
town that was susceptible to attacks from the Islamic extremist group,
Boko Haram. On the day in question, the girls of Government Girls
Secondary School Chibok were kidnaped by Boko Haram while preparing to
write their final physics examinations.
“Flash forward to April 2, 2016: Governor Kashim Shettima confesses
in an interview with Premium Times that he, the chief security officer
of the state, DID NOT inform then President Jonathan when the girls were
kidnapped for reasons best known to him.
“April 17, 2014: Exactly three days after the kidnap, President
Jonathan who had been unaware of the issue because of the deliberate
refusal of the APC led government of Borno state to brief him called for
an emergency meeting at the Presidential villa.
“May 4, 2014: After consistent confused and contradictory information
from the Borno state Government and various other authority figures,
the Presidency invited the principal actors in the Chibok saga to the
Presidential villa to ascertain the truth. The Presidency was shocked at
the non appearance by officials of the Borno state government. The
governor’s wife who was invited shunned the event and when the then
First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan saw the scanty representation from
Borno she famously exclaimed ‘na only you waka come’?
“May 6, 2014: The then National Publicity Secretary of the APC and
now the current minister of information, Lai Mohammed, released a
statement calling the Presidency’s intervention a ‘distraction’.
“May 26, 2014: The Nigerian military revealed through Chief of
Defence Staff, Air Marshal Alex Badeh, that it knew the location of the
girls but could not attack because of fear of loss of lives of the girls
after a similar operation in Sokoto to save an Italian and a Briton led
to loss of lives of the hostages taken by an affiliate of Boko Haram.
“Unspecified Date in May 2014: The Jonathan administration began secret negotiations to secure the release of the Chibok girls.
“October 6, 2014: Then President Jonathan visits Niamey as part of
efforts to secure the release of the Chibok girls with the help of the
Nigerien government.
“October 17, 2014: A truce was announced with Boko Haram after
negotiations which was to allow for the release of the Chibok girls. The
truce was broken by Boko Haram who reneged on their promise to release
their captives.
“There are other actions taken by the Jonathan admin which I have not
listed here but the point I am making is that for Alhaji Lai Mohammed
to say that that government did nothing is not just a lie, but a
shameless attempt to rewrite history by a man who has scant regard for
the truth.
“It is my prayer that the Chibok girls will be released but for that
to happen, there must be complete transparency and truthfulness from
government.
“Finally let me say that a man like, Lai Mohammed, with an over
bloated opinion of himself and the poverty inducing government in which
he serves cannot argue with a man with an accurate command of the
facts.”
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