Buhari Deserves Praise Following Killings on Abuja-Kaduna Road?

Buhari Deserves Praise Following Killings on Abuja-Kaduna Road?

THE ALTERNATIVE

By  Reno Omokri

On Friday, November 26, 2021, Presidential spokesman, Garba Shehu said Nigerians should give credit to Buhari for alleviating the spate of insecurity in the nation.

I found his assertions strange, especially as Nigeria has deteriorated in all international security indices, including the most renowned of them, the Global Terror Index, which had listed Nigeria as the world’s fourth most terrorised nation in 2014, but now lists Nigeria as the third most insecure nation on Earth behind only Iraq and Afghanistan.

As a matter of fact, if you excise Northern Nigeria from the rest of Nigeria, Arewa would be the most insecure place on Earth, bar none.

So one finds it difficult to understand the premise upon which Garba made his assertion.

With that in mind, I made a public challenge to Garba Shehu on Saturday, November 27, 2021 (his birthday), as follows:
Dear Garba Shehu,

Sincere happy birthday greetings to you. Yesterday, you renewed your claim that “Buhari deserves credit for tackling insecurity”. I now renew my challenge to you. Spend a weekend alone, without security in Bama, and I will pay you $50k.
Let that be my birthday present to you.

Please comment and share, and tag him, so Garba can’t deny seeing this. I am willing to pay the money into an escrow account TODAY or deposit the funds with any objective and neutral Third Party of Garba Shehu’s choice.

The very next day, Garba gave a typical knee-jerk response and said:

“My message to anyone who made money using Leah Sharibu’s sad ordeal, and they are flaunting it remains unchanged: This is blood money. I don’t need any of it. Period.”

Now, if Garba Shehu has any evidence that I have made money from Leah Sharibu’s ordeal, I appeal to him to please expose it. Publish it immediately. Garba has access to the media. Alternatively, if any individual, church, foundation, government or country has given me even one kobo for Leah, please speak now, or forever remain silent.

Leah Sharibu’s father, Nathan, did a video denouncing Garba’s false allegation the last time he made them last year.

Rather than make money from Leah, I wrote a book about her, which inspired a BBC Documentary, and got the attention of the US government, and I donated all the proceeds to her parents, plus £4000.

I received an award in Hollywood for my selfless sacrifice on behalf of Leah. And during the awards ceremony, broadcast worldwide, I also repeated this challenge to the Buhari government to provide any evidence that I have benefited from #FreeLeahSharibu. Two years later, Garba is still making false allegations without evidence, like the failed false allegations made against me by the infamous Natasha H Akpoti, who is believed to have been used against me by the Buhari administration.

Having said that, the issue is not Leah Sharibu. The issue is that Garba said, and I quote, “Buhari deserves credit for tackling insecurity”. If Garba really believes that, then I challenge him to go to Bama in Borno, for a weekend, alone, without security. And I will pay him $50,000.

But if even Garba truly believes my money is ‘blood money’, then he ought to do it because he truly believes “Buhari deserves credit for tackling insecurity”.

Garba and I used to write anti-Buhari materials between 2003 and 2005 when he was Atiku Abubakar’s spokesman under a Peoples Democratic Party government. Today, you are praising the man he once denounced.

What does that say about the level of morality in Nigeria’s political sphere?

Just days ago, we all witnessed the open broad daylight operation by terrorist bandits on the Abuja-Kaduna expressway. We saw videos of corpses. Law-abiding Nigerians laid to waste by these bandits that Sheikh Gumi and Garba Shehu speak about with so much love.

The Buhari administration has said nothing about that travesty. No words of comfort were offered to the citizens. Nothing to reassure the public about the government’s efforts to secure that vital road that connects the Northwest to the Federal Capital Territory.

And while a shell-shocked nation was looking for direction, the first public outing that Garba Shehu gave after that particular gruesome incident was to tell Nigerians that “Buhari deserves credit for tackling insecurity”. The same Nigerians who just saw their fellow citizens slaughtered like goats by bandit terrorists, of whom Sheikh Gumi says we should appease by giving them land and money!

Think about it. That is enough provocation to the Nigerian people to take to the streets. But we are too docile a people.

I released a photo on my social media profiles. It is a photograph I took with another of Buhari’s spokesman, called Tolu Ogunlesi. This photo was taken by Garba Shehu. It was at a retreat organised for Garba and his colleagues by Atiku Abubakar in 2013. At that time, Garba was a PDP agent. Now, why would anyone take such a person seriously?

If the Buhari administration were a responsible government, heads ought to have rolled over the Abuja-Kaduna road affair.

The President’s many media men should have fanned out to do the morning circuit on TV stations. They ought to be reassuring the public—calming nerves. One or more of those behind the incident ought to have been apprehended and made a public spectacle to show that human life still has value in Nigeria.

But no. Instead of behaving like thinking people, Garba chose to elevate his snivelling sycophancy to a new high by massaging Buhari’s ego at a time he ought to be messaging to the public that they could go on with their legitimate public activities without fear on the now infamous Abuja-Kaduna road.

How can Buhari ever hope to be successful when he has surrounded himself with such individuals with thoroughly deadened consciences? People like Femi Adesina of “giving land for ranching is better than death” fame, or the #LekkiMassacre denying Lai Mohammed, who confessed that even his own grandson thinks he is a liar.

Buhari does not yet know that his government (if you can call it that) is now unquestionably the worst thing to have happened to Nigeria. He may think that after his maladministration, he can retire to relative safety in Daura. But he is wrong.

By God’s grace, Buhari will join Charles Taylor, Omar el-Bashir, Habib Bourguiba, Hosni Mubarak, and Hissène Habré to retire to prison instead of his hometown!

And no matter how much money they may have made, people like Garba Shehu will go down in history as the foot soldiers of a government that oversaw the gradual destruction of the institutions that made Northern Nigeria great, even while lying to Northerners that they were looking after their interests.

Reno’s Nuggets

Have you seen rain last forever? So why think you are so special that your own pain will last forever? You are not that special. Your issue only looks big to you because you hyper focus on it instead of God. Even Noah’s Flood ended. And the God that ended it is still on the Throne. Chill. Did He not say He will never leave you nor forsake you? Lean on your Father’s Shoulders and relax. Whatever pain you are going through MUST end.
May today be useful for you.
May tonight be restful for you.
May your home be peaceful for you.
May tomorrow be blissful for you,
May your week be eventful for you.
And, may the rest of the year be successful for you.
In Christ’s Name!
#RenosNuggets #FreeLeahSharibu

Related Articles