Buhari was never a negotiator for Boko Haram – Garba Shehu

Garba Shehu has refuted claims that former President Muhammadu Buhari was nominated by Boko Haram insurgents to negotiate on their behalf when he was alive.

Shehu, who was a presidential spokesman to the late Buhari out rightly denied that neither the group’s founder, Mohammed Yusuf, nor his successor, Abubakar Shekau, ever made such a nomination.

He said, the terrorists apart from repeatedly denied that they ever nominated Muhammadu Buhari, even threatened his life.

Garba reacting to the former President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan’s claims that Boko Haram had chosen Buhari to mediate with the Federal Government, said, such claim was “false and misleading.”

He recalled that Buhari himself narrowly escaped a bomb attack on his convoy in Kaduna in 2014, an incident widely linked to the insurgents.

Shehu also pointed out that the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), Buhari’s former party, publicly rejected the alleged nomination at the time.

The denial was issued in a statement by the then National Secretary, Engr. Buba Galadima, who stressed that Buhari had no knowledge of such an appointment.

According to Shehu, the speculation began when a Boko Haram faction, led by Abu Mohammed Ibn Abdulaziz, named Buhari and some northern elders as preferred mediators during a press conference in Maiduguri in 2012.

“Shekau himself disowned the claim and said Abdulaziz had no mandate to speak for the group,” Shehu added.