Samuel Omang
The political back-and-forth between two of Nigeria’s former leaders resurfaced this on Friday after Goodluck Jonathan claimed that Boko Haram once nominated Muhammadu Buhari as a mediator between the terrorist sect and the Federal Government. But Garba Shehu, spokesperson to the late President Buhari, has dismissed the remark as not only false but also unfair to the memory of a man who, he insisted, was a sworn enemy of the insurgents.
In a statement released on October 3, Shehu accused Jonathan of twisting history for political gain. “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 the government,” he said. “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’s rebuttal was firm. He argued that Boko Haram’s late leader, Abubakar Shekau, never sought Buhari’s intervention. Rather, Shekau consistently denounced the former military ruler and even targeted him personally. In 2014, Buhari narrowly escaped a Boko Haram bomb attack in Kaduna, though some of his aides sustained injuries. That attempt on his life, Shehu said, was proof that the terrorist group saw Buhari as an adversary, not an ally.
The controversy over Buhari’s supposed nomination as mediator is not new. Back in 2011, rumours swirled that Boko Haram had selected him, alongside other Northern leaders, to broker peace talks with the government. But Shehu reminded Nigerians that Buhari himself immediately denied knowledge of any such role.
At the time, Buba Galadima, then national secretary of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), relayed Buhari’s words: “As at 10 p.m. yesterday (Thursday) when I spoke with him, he said he has not even heard about it.” According to Galadima, Buhari dismissed the story as speculation, since no one had contacted him directly or formally.
So where did the story come from? Shehu traced it back to a faction within Boko Haram, fronted by Abu Mohammed Ibn Abdulaziz, who introduced himself as the commander for Southern and Northern Borno. At a press conference in Maiduguri, Abdulaziz claimed the sect wanted Buhari, late Yobe governor Bukar Abba Ibrahim, former petroleum minister Shettima Ali Monguno, Ambassador Gaji Gatimari, and several Borno Emirate elders to mediate. But Shekau’s loyalists swiftly disowned Abdulaziz, declaring he had no mandate to speak for them.
Still, the political damage was done. Jonathan’s Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) capitalised on the rumour, a move that further angered Buhari’s camp. Rotimi Fashekun, the CPC’s publicity secretary at the time, accused Jonathan and the PDP of deliberately weaponising the false nomination. He called it “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 ongoing massive looting of their common patrimony.”
Fashekun was blunt. He insisted that Buhari had never been “directly or remotely connected with any insurrection or insurgency against the Nigerian nation.” Instead, he painted Buhari as a nationalist whose appeal cut across ethnic and religious divides. The real threat, Fashekun argued, was what he called “Political Boko Haram”—a faction he claimed was sponsored by the PDP itself.
This was not mere rhetoric. Jonathan himself had once admitted that Boko Haram elements had infiltrated his government, a point underscored by his then-National Security Adviser, General Andrew Azazi. For the CPC, this admission, alongside revelations from the State Security Service, was evidence that the ruling party at the time bore responsibility for the insecurity ravaging the country.
Shehu’s fresh statement revived all these old wounds, casting Jonathan’s new claim as a recycled story with little credibility. By the end of his remarks, Shehu turned his focus from defending Buhari’s memory to warning Jonathan about his political future. “To win in 2027, Dr. Jonathan should look for a better story to tell Nigerians,” he concluded.
The clash underscores how Nigeria’s bitter partisan battles often resurface years later, with old allegations repackaged for new political seasons. But for Shehu, Buhari’s position remains clear: far from being Boko Haram’s mediator, he was one of its most determined targets.