The statement said, “in the wake of the arrest, there were insinuations in some quarters that the Borno State Government was harbouring a suspected sect member at its lodge. “There is the added allegation that the state government could be in cahoots with the sect, which has claimed responsibility for terrorist outrages in many parts of the country, most of them in Borno State.
“The Borno State Government hereby vehemently dismisses these allegations and insinuations. They are untrue, misleading, callous and are an attempt by some detractors to turn the truth on its head and to try to score political points with a very serious matter of individual and state security.”
When we first heard about this incident, His Excellency Governor Kashim Shettima immediately ordered an investigation and this is what we found.
On the evening of Thursday, January 5, one Ibrahim Umar Abba, an indigene of Borno State and a post-graduate student at the University of Birmingham in the UK, called the permanent secretary of the Borno State Liaison Office in Abuja.
He said he was scheduled to catch a British Airways flight back to the UK the following day and would like to spend the night at the Governor’s Lodge in Abuja. The permanent secretary, who at the time was in Maiduguri, granted Ibrahim Abba Umar permission to spend the night at the lodge.
When Ibrahim Umar Abba turned up at the lodge, he came with two other persons, one of them an Air force officer, the other a civilian. Neither of them is known to His Excellency the Governor, or to any other official of the Borno State Government. It turned out that the security agencies were on the trail of one of the three men, later identified as Kabiru Sokoto. The security agents arrived at the lodge and arrested the three “guests” as well as all the staff of the Governor’s Lodge.
I will like to state emphatically that neither His Excellency Governor Kashim Shettima nor any other top official of the Borno State Government ever knew the said Kabiru Sokoto or the other two men. In fact, their surreptitious gaining of entry into the lodge where His Excellency often stays during his visits to Abuja is a very serious breach of security which has caused acute embarrassment to the State Government.
I will also like to remind the public that in the last one year alone, many leaders of the Borno State ANPP have been assassinated by suspected members of the Jama’atu ahlus Sunnah Lid’dawa’ti wal Jihad. They include the late Awagana Ali Ngala, then North East Vice Chairman of ANPP; Alhaji Modu Fannami Gubio, ANPP gubernatorial candidate Borno State; Honourable Mustafa Baale, Chairman of Jere Local Government; Fannami Ngranam, ANPP Chairman for Jere Local Government; Goni Modu Sheriff, Chairman of Ngala Local Government and many others.
How therefore can the Borno State ANPP chapter and the state government that it controls possibly be in cahoots with or knowingly shelter a suspected member of the sect thought to be behind the cold blooded murder of so many of our leaders? The truth of the matter is that the incident was a major security breach by men who have the sinister intention to cause harm to His Excellency Governor Kashim Shettima, but for the providence of God. They have been plotting this for a long time and they succeeded in penetrating the Governor’s Lodge and spending a night there due to the sloppy breach of procedure by an innocent government official.
I therefore wish to urge the public to ignore the malicious, wicked and illogical insinuations being made by some people that the Borno State Government knowingly harboured suspected members of a sect. It is a wicked attempt to turn truth on its head.
Signed:
AMBASSADOR BABA AHMED JIDDA, OFR
Secretary to the State Government,
Borno State, Nigeria
Secretary to the State Government,
Borno State, Nigeria
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