{"id":63452,"date":"2018-11-22T00:38:28","date_gmt":"2018-11-21T23:38:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/?p=63452"},"modified":"2018-11-22T00:39:15","modified_gmt":"2018-11-21T23:39:15","slug":"chibok-girls-shettima-blows-hot-over-claims-in-jonathans-book-full-text","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/?p=63452","title":{"rendered":"Chibok girls: Shettima blows hot over claims in Jonathan&#8217;s book [Full text]"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/arewa.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Borno-Governor-Kashim-Shettima.jpg\"><\/p>\n<div id=\"mvp-content-main\">Borno State Governor, Kashim Shettima has accused former President Goodluck Jonathan of deliberately omitting an investigative report submitted to him in June 2014, by the presidential facts-finding committee he constituted in May 2014 on circumstances surrounding the April 14, 2014 Chibok girls\u2019 abduction.<\/p>\n<p>Shettima spoke in reaction to chapter four of Jonathan\u2019s book \u201cMy Transition hours\u201d, titled \u201cThe Chibok school girls affair\u201d, launched on Tuesday in Abuja.<\/p>\n<p>The former President had indicated that the schoolgirls abduction was a product of conspiracy by the then opposition All Progressives Congress, APC, in connivance with Borno State Government.<\/p>\n<p>He also accused the Borno Government and then President Barack Obama\u2019s administration in the United States of undermining efforts to rescue the Chibok girls in 2014.<\/p>\n<p>However, Governor Shettima through a rejoinder released by his Special Adviser on Communications and Strategy, Malam Isa Gusau on Wednesday, said the truth was that Jonathan never believed there was ever an abduction and that rescue efforts were late.<\/p>\n<p>He said: \u201cThe whole of Tuesday night, I took the pains of reading His Excellency, former President Goodluck Jonathan\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was amused that despite \u200eadmitting in paragraph 15, that he had (in May 2014) constituted a Presidential Fact-Finding Committee under Brigadier General Ibrahim Sabo and many others \u201cto investigate\u201d 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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat 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 gulty verdicts to anyone but himself, with respect to the open failures of his administration to rescue our daughters and in tackling the Boko Haram challenges\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>The Governor declared that by refusing to publish any part of his own panel\u2019s findings on the Chibok abduction, Jonathan\u2019s book was \u201cnothing short of a presidential tale by midday\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Shettima recalled that \u201cOn Tuesday, the 6th of May, 2014, President Jonathan had inaugurated multi-agency\/stakeholder fact-finding panel under the chairmanship of Brig. General Ibrahim Sabo (rtd), a one-time Director of Military Intelligence and also appointed a secretary from the Niger Delta.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPresident Jonathan single handedly selected all members of that committee which includedhis trustees amongst serving and retired security officers from the Army, DSS and Police; representatives of the UN and ECOWAS, representatives of the Chibok community, local and international civil rights organisations, representatives of the National Council on Women Societies, the Nigeria Union of Journalists amongst other persons he trusted. For almost two months, the probe panel undertook forensic assessment of all documents on the entire issues, held investigative meetings with parents of the schoolgirls during a visit to Chibok.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe panel held separate one-on-one investigative meetings with myself, the then Chief of Defence Staff, Chief of Army Staff, Chiefs of Air and Naval Staff, met the then Director General of the DSS and the Inspector General of Police, all of whom were appointees of President Jonathan. The panel interrogated officials of Borno Government including the Comof Education and the school principal.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe panel also held investigative meetings with heads of all security agencies in Borno State including security formations in charge of Chibok. At the end, the panel submitted it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHowever, I remember that on June 24, 2014, the ThisDay Newspaper claimed to have obtained a copy of the panel\u2019s report and published as its lead, that painstaking findings by the Presidential panel had indicted the military under Jonathan\u2019s watch and completely absolved the federal Borno State Government of any blame regarding the Chibok abduction.<\/p>\n<p>The newspaper went further to say that panel actually commended efforts of the Borno State Government in its commitment to the fight against Boko Haram as testified by heads of security establishments\u201d the statement from Gusau said.<\/p>\n<p>\u200eGovernor Shettima also said it was clear to him after reading the former president\u2019s book, it was clear that he still lives with poor understanding of issues under his presidency.<\/p>\n<p>The Governor cited that for instance, Jonathan\u2019s claim on page 31 that Boko Haram wanted a Muslim President rather than him as Christian was laughable since the insurgents actually began their deadliest attacks in Borno under the regime of late President Umaru Musa Yar\u2019adua, a Christian from northern Nigeria.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe know for a fact that as vicious cycle of evil, Boko Haram fighters do not care about the religion of their targeted victims. \u200eThey attack Mosques and churches. They are lunatics who regard anyone who doesn\u2019t share their ideology as an infidel. So, I wonder how the former President didn\u2019t take time to understand the biggest challenge under his presidency\u201d, Shettima said.<\/p>\n<p>The Governor advised former President Jonathan to write a second book on account of his presidency which should contain the facts as have been presented to him, regarding the Chibok abduction rather than the fiction he made public on Tuesday.\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Borno State Governor, Kashim Shettima has accused former President Goodluck Jonathan of deliberately omitting an investigative report submitted to him in June 2014, by the presidential facts-finding committee he constituted in May 2014 on circumstances surrounding the April 14, 2014 Chibok girls\u2019 abduction. Shettima spoke in reaction to chapter four of Jonathan\u2019s book \u201cMy Transition [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":41961,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[4384,844,8074],"class_list":["post-63452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-politics","tag-gudluck-jonathan","tag-kashim-shettima","tag-my-transition-hours"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=63452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63452\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/41961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}