Former presidential aide, Garba Shehu, has refuted claims made by ex-President Goodluck Jonathan that Boko Haram once nominated the late President Muhammadu Buhari to mediate in peace talks with the Federal Government.
In a statement shared on his X (formerly Twitter) account, Shehu said:
“Boko Haram did not nominate Buhari as their mediator. To be president in 2027, Goodluck Jonathan should look for another story to tell Nigerians.”
Shehu explained that the remarks credited to Jonathan amounted to a distortion of history and an unfair attack on Buhari’s legacy. According to him, the terrorist group’s leaders never sought Buhari’s involvement in their negotiations.
“We are compelled to make a response to a terrible statement made on the late president Muhammadu Buhari by his predecessor in office, President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, to the effect that Boko Haram had nominated him to represent them in a dialogue with government. If this is a campaign statement towards his bid for the presidency in 2027, we want to say to him that ‘Mr. Jonathan, you are making a false start,’” Shehu wrote.
He stressed that Muhammadu Buhari was, in fact, a target of Boko Haram’s violent campaigns. “Muhammed Yusuf or Abubakar Shekau, the deceased leaders of the Boko Haram terrorist group, never nominated Muhammadu Buhari for any such role. In fact, Shekau routinely denounced and threatened Buhari, and their ideologies were in direct opposition,” Shehu clarified.
Shehu reminded the public that in 2014, Buhari narrowly survived a bomb attack in Kaduna allegedly carried out by Boko Haram. His aides, he said, sustained various degrees of injuries during the attempt on his life.
The statement also revisited Buhari’s 2012 denial of any knowledge of being nominated as a mediator by the sect. At the time, the then National Secretary of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), Engr. Buba Galadima, told reporters:
“As at 10pm yesterday (Thursday) when I spoke with him, he said he has not even heard about it. The whole thing to him is just speculation. And since nobody has contacted him as a person for him to even know who is behind what, and what the motives of the whole exercise are, he would not speak to the press.”
Galadima further noted that Buhari considered himself a patriotic Nigerian who would “continue to pray until peace and tranquillity return to Nigeria.”
The controversy, according to Shehu, originated from a press conference in Maiduguri where a Boko Haram faction leader, Abu Mohammed Ibn Abdulaziz, allegedly listed Buhari alongside other northern leaders as potential mediators. However, Shehu emphasized that Shekau himself disowned Abdulaziz’s claims, insisting he had “no mandate” to make such declarations.
The then CPC National Publicity Secretary, Rotimi Fashekun, also dismissed the nomination reports, accusing Jonathan’s government of exploiting them for political gain. “This is the latest gambit in the desire of this organically corrupt PDP-led Federal Government in diverting the attention of the unsuspecting Nigerian public from the on-going massive looting of their common patrimony,” Fashekun had said at the time.
Shehu concluded that Jonathan’s recent comments were misleading and should not be used to score political points ahead of the 2027 elections.
