Garba Shehu asks religious leaders to guide their utterances

Garba Shehu, senior special assistant to the president on media and publicity, has warned religious leaders to refrain from making divisive statements.

In a statement on Saturday, Shehu said the responsibility of maintaining peace and order is not that of the government alone but religious organisations as well.

He said the allegation that President Muhammadu Buhari let down Muslims by not attending the emergency summit of Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC) called by Turkey to discuss the US declaration of Jerusalem as the official capital of Israel is “misleading and baseless”.

Shehu explained that Buhari had to go to France to attend the Climate Change Summit because he had earlier given a firm commitment to President Emmanuel Macron.

He said Adamu Adamu, minister of education, represented the president at the meeting.

“The Paris summit on climate change wasn’t a junket. It was also about the problems of the Lake Chad region which affects Nigeria as well as the neighbouring countries,” he reportedly told BBC.

“About 30 million lives are involved. Without the drying up of the lake, we would probably not have had the acute poverty that nurtured the environment for Boko Haram terrorism.”