The Presidency has said reports from The Telegraph, a United Kingdom based<\/p>\n
Newspaper, accusing President Mohammadu Buhari of diverting millions of
\nPounds meant to fight Boko Haram to fighting opposition politicians, are
\nfalse and baseless.<\/p>\n
A Statement signed by Presidential Spokesman, Malam Garba Shehu said
\nTelegraph report contained “inaccuracies” and attributions from unnamed
\nsources.
\nThe statement read in full.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur attention has been drawn to a piece published on April 12, 2016, in
\nThe Telegraph (London) paper, by one Con Coughlin (identified as \u2018Defence
\nEditor\u2019), and titled, \u2018Nigeria using UK aid to persecute president\u2019s
\npolitical foes rather to fight Boko Haram.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cThe piece is not only full of factual inaccuracies, it also betrays a
\nshocking ignorance of Nigeria and the country\u2019s ongoing war against
\nterrorism.<\/p>\n
\u201cMr Coughlin\u2019s editorial tactic is to quote unnamed \u201csenior officials\u201d and
\n\u201cWestern diplomats\u201d and \u201cWestern officials\u201d and \u201cpolitical opponents\u201d
\nmaking fact-free and unfounded statements. It also appears that he sought
\nout only those opinions which suited and reinforced his disgracefully
\nfalse headline. Nowhere in the piece is there anything that suggests he
\nattempted to contact the Nigerian government for its own side of the
\nstory.<\/p>\n
\u201cCoughlin writes that \u201cAmerican officials are also angry that $2.1 billion
\nof aid given to the Nigerian military to tackle Boko Haram has not been
\nproperly accounted for.\u201d It does not occur to him that the $2.1 billion he
\nrefers to was budgeted for and wholly spent by the government that
\nPresident Buhari and his party defeated in the March 2015 presidential
\nelections, and that one of President Buhari\u2019s priorities has been
\ninvestigating the misuse of those funds.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt also does not appear to occur to Mr. Coughlin that the \u201cpolitical
\nopponents\u201d he is falsely accusing President Buhari of \u201ctargeting\u201d and
\n\u201cpersecuting\u201d are actually on trial on account of how they spent the $2.1
\nbillion in question. Mr. Coughlin is equally unaware of the fact that the
\ninvestigating panel set up by Mr. Buhari to probe the $2.1 billion
\nrecently published a preliminary report that confirmed that much of that
\nmoney was indeed looted or mis-spent by the accused persons, and that the
\ngovernment has started to recover the funds.<\/p>\n
\u201cCoughlin accuses President Buhari\u2019s government of attempting to cover-up
\nthe abductions of 400 women and children \u201cabducted last year by militants
\nfrom the Nigerian town of Damasak.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is absolutely untrue. The Damasak abductions he\u2019s referring to,
\nwhich were recently widely reported, took place, not \u201clast year\u201d as he
\nsays, but in late 2014, well before Mr. Buhari was elected President of
\nNigeria. (And, by the way, President Buhari came to power on May 29, 2015,
\nnot July, as Coughlin reports). \u201cA simple search by Mr. Coughlin of his
\npaper\u2019s archives would have revealed these facts. A simple fact-check by
\nhis copy-editors would have spared the Telegraph the embarrassment of
\npublishing this drivel.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are several other inaccuracies and baseless statements in the
\npiece, but Mr. Coughlin is too enamoured of his anonymous sources to
\nrealise they might be misleading him, or be as ignorant about the
\nsituation as he is. The suggestion that Boko Haram is going \u201cfrom strength
\nto strength\u201d is an eminently laughable one; not even Nigeria\u2019s opposition
\nparty would make such an absurd claim.<\/p>\n
\u201cSince President Buhari took office, schools in Borno State, shut for more
\nthan one year under the previous government, have reopened. The same
\napplies to the airport in Maiduguri, shut down in December 2013 after a
\ndevastating Boko Haram attack on the nearby Air Force Base.<\/p>\n
\u201cThousands of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) have now started
\nreturning home. Last Sunday, El-Kanemi Warriors Football Club played its
\nfirst game in its home base of Maiduguri in more than two seasons. Until
\nnow they had been forced to play home games outside the region, on account
\nof security concerns. There are several more examples of how the people of
\nthe region are finally getting a chance to rebuild their lives, as the
\nNigerian Armed Forces and a Multinational Joint Task Force continue their
\nwork of routing the terrorists.<\/p>\n
\u201cMr. Coughlin not only sounds like a spokesperson for the very people
\nwhose corruption and mismanagement allowed Boko Haram to bring Nigeria to
\nits knees \u2013 and whose disastrous legacy President Buhari has spent the
\nlast one year redeeming Nigeria from \u2013 he is also guilty of failing to
\nobserve the most basic rules of responsible journalism.<\/p>\n
\u201cMr Coughlin needs a refresher course on responsible journalism as much as
\nhe needs a crash course on Nigeria. Until he submits himself to these,
\nwe\u2019re afraid he will continue to embarrass not only himself, but also the
\nrevered British media institution that is the Telegraph.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Presidency has said reports from The Telegraph, a United Kingdom based Newspaper, accusing President Mohammadu Buhari of diverting millions of Pounds meant to fight Boko Haram to fighting opposition…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44340,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exclusive"],"yoast_head":"\n