‘He sat on facts about Chibok girls abduction’ — Shettima faults Jonathan’s book

Kashim Shettima, governor of Borno state, has accused former President Goodluck Jonathan of writing an elementary book of tales, saying he deliberately omitted facts about the abduction of Chibok girls.

On Tuesday, the former president launched a book titled ‘My Transition Hours’, in which he wrote about issues concerning his administration.

In a statement on Wednesday by Isa Gusau, special adviser on communications and strategy to the governor, Shettima said the former president attempted to sweep under the carpet a report submitted to him by an investigative committee in June 2014 about the abduction of April 2014.

The governor was reacting to the allegations raised in chapter four of the book titled ‘The Chibok school girls affair’ that the abduction was a product of a conspiracy by the then opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) in connivance with Borno state government.

“The former President’s elementary book of tales fell short of the courage required of him to publish findings by his own panel in chapter four of his book,” Shettima said.

“The whole of Tuesday night, I took the pains of reading His Excellency, former President Goodluck Jonathan’s book, My transition hours, from the first to the 177th page. I took particular interest in chapter four (the Chibok school girls affair) which has 42 paragraphs written on pages 27 to 36.

“I was amused that despite ‎admitting in paragraph 15, that he had (in May 2014) constituted a Presidential Fact-Finding Committee under Brigadier General Ibrahim Sabo and many others “to investigate” the Chibok abduction, former President Jonathan refused to mention any part or whole of the findings by that panel which had submitted a highly investigative report submitted to him on Friday, June 20, 2014 after the panel held investigative meetings with the then Chiefs of Defense Staff, Army Staff, Air Staff, the DG, DSS and IGP, met all security heads in Borno, visited Chibok, met with parents of abducted schoolgirls, met surviving students, interrogated officials of the school and the supervising ministry of education, interrogated officials of WAEC and analyzed all correspondences.

“President Jonathan has refused to make public the findings submitted to him. I was expecting the findings in his book but he has deliberately swept that report under the carpet.

“What has become very clear is that the former President decided to sit on facts in his custody while he published, in an elementary standard, a book of fiction designed to pass guilty verdicts to anyone but himself, with respect to the open failures of his administration to rescue our daughters and in tackling the Boko Haram challenges.”

The governor stated that by refusing to publish any part of his own panel’s findings on the Chibok abduction, Jonathan’s book was nothing short of “a presidential tale by midday”.

Shettima advised the former president to write a second book on account of his presidency which should contain the facts as they were presented to him, regarding the Chibok abduction rather than the fiction he made public on Tuesday.