Buhari Denies Knowing Any Boko Haram Member

Let me just add, people are now deaf to such pronunciations, they believe in actions and antecedents.

Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (rtd), has said he does not know any member of Boko Haram sect. He said this in an interview with journalists at his party’s national secretariat in Abuja yesterday during the party’s Board of Trustees meeting.

“I do not know any member of the Boko Haram sect. I do not believe and I do not know of any religion that will go and kill people, burn schools. There was a stage where I mentioned that I agreed with one intellectual where he said there are three Boko Haram, one of Muhammed Yusuf, whom we know. A leader of the military then in Maiduguri did what we know in the military about internal security. They looked for Yusuf, they handed him over to the police; healthy young man and he died under a very dubious account in the police custody.

"The second Boko Haram was a criminal attacking banks and market places stealing money. They issued a statement that they are Boko Haram, and I said and I have no regret saying it, that the biggest Boko Haram is the Federal Government itself, because it has all the powers to stop anarchy in the country

“Now the social part of the country has been paralised, economic activities have stopped. People are no longer thinking of employment, they are thinking of what to eat and how to go about the following day.”

Buhari said the BOT reviewed what transpired in the party from the time of the elections through the tribunals to the Supreme Court.

 He said, “Among the things discussed is the matter of merger which has occupied the minds of most Nigerians. The only realistic way of consolidating the multi-party democracy system is for opposition parties to come together and fight the ruling party Peoples Democratic Party.”

Culled from Punch

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Politics: Babangida Threatens Buhari

A few hours after President Goodluck Jonathan and ex-Head of State, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari took a swipe at former leaders, ex-Military President Ibrahim Babangida fired back.


He asked Dr. Jonathan to learn to accept criticisms and threatened to expose the “holier-than thou-attitude” of Gen. Buhari.

Gen. Babangida, who spoke through Prince Kassim Afegbua, his media adviser, reminded Gen. Buhari that those who live in glass houses should not throw stones. He also advised Dr. Jonathan to look elsewhere, not him, if he is blaming past leaders that are criticising him.
Kassim said: “On President Jonathan, there is nothing wrong in criticism if it is constructive and in the interest of the country. Gen. Babangida is one unique former President who does not criticise a sitting President as a matter of courtesy.

“If President Jonathan is blaming past leaders, he should look elsewhere, certainly not IBB. “On Gen. Buhari, it is not in IBB’s tradition to take up issues with his colleague former President. But for the purpose of record, we are conversant with Gen. Buhari’s so-called holier-than-thou attitude. “He is a one-time Minister of Petroleum and we have good records of his tenure as minister.

“Secondly, he also presided over the Petroleum Trust Fund ( PTF) which records we also have. “We challenge him to come out with clean hands in those two portfolios he headed. Or, we will help him to expose his. “records of performance during those periods.” “Those who live in glass houses do not throw stones. Gen. Buhari should be properly guided.”

The Nation

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Sanusi, Buhari, El-rufai Celebrate As 8 CBN Staff Still Lie In The Mortuary Or Are Yet To Be Identified.

 

While the bodies of eight of his staff who were on their way to Lagos for a conference are yet to be identified or are still in the morgue,the Central Bank of Nigeria Govenor Lamido Sanusi went ahead with his elaborate turbanning by the Emir Ado Bayero of Kano yesterday morning as the Danmajen Kano.

Not only was Lamido turbaned this morning, but his friends and associates took several pages in the national dailies to sing his praises and congratulate him on the ‘honour’ done to him.

This is coming even as the nation is still reeling from the shocking deaths of over 155 people who lost their lives when a Dana airline flight from Abuja to Lagos in which they were flying crashed in Iju, a suburb of Lagos, killing all 153 people on board and an as yet unknown number on the ground having crashed into a two story building.

What is even worse is that former military head of state and presidential candidate of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), Muhammadu Buhari and controversial former minister of the FCT, Malam Nasir Elrufai, were both at the event to ‘celebrate’ with the CBN governor.

Many have called to question the propriety of mounting such an ostentatious celebration when the nation is in deep mourning, but it seems that some are mourning while others are celebrating

 

Written by Ayo Akinfe

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Emmy Awards/Pulitzer Winning Producer Richard Spiropoulos Shares His Experience At The Silverbird Man of The Year Awards

Have you ever wondered how nice it would be if Nigeria has an equivalent of the US Library of congress?  Ok that seems a little bit like overreaching since we can’t boast of generating and supplying constant power to every home right but still it doesn’t hurt to dream does it?  It would be great to have a national archive where our children can read about the amalgamation of the north and south protectorates; a central data base where we can easily access video footage of speeches given by our past leaders. In writing this post I tried to check online for any information I can glean about the history of our great country and I came up short. I mean the bulk of what I found was Biafra related.

I

wondered who would tell our children about how the states were created, how we evolved from using the Queen’s Pound’s Sterling to the Nigerian Naira.
Richard Spiropoulos, a two time Emmy Award & Pulitzer winning Producer, FOX, CNN attended the Silverbird’s Man of The Year awards.He shares his take on the event and the effect of the dearth of  a national archive with us.
As I walked into the conference center at Eko Hotels and Suites, Victoria Island for the Silverbird’s “Man of The Year” awards, I realized I was horribly late. My amateurish miscalculation of “Nigerian Time” had caused this horrible faux pas and sadly my first foray into Nigerian journalism wasn’t off to a roaring start.
As I slunk into the shadows, I quickly put my camera together and right there it hit me; this room was alive and teeming with history.The screens around the room revealed rare and priceless footage from the aftermath of the Biafran war. But, it wasn’t this documentary that gave me this sense of history, it was the people in the room.



Living legends, figures in our nation’s history who had come forward at various times when Nigeria called and they were still doing so five decades later. I was in the same room with Generals Yakubu Gowon, Theophilus Danjuma and Muhammadu Buhari.
They were all being honored by Silverbird with Lifetime Achievement Awards for their unrelenting patriotism and commitment to the country.



It felt strange looking at them as young men, on the screens flashing on the walls around and then looking into their faces directly across the room as their eyes glazed over, lost in recollection. They had been there, when all hell broke loose and the country nearly fell apart. They were there when brother rose against brother. They were amongst the few left who had the keys to the vaults of our nation’s history.
I snapped out of my reverie for a second and turned to the photographer beside me to ask what I had missed and sadly, it turned out that I had missed a poignant ode to three of Nigeria’s founding fathers.Obafemi Awolowo, Nnamdi Azikiwe and Ahmadu Bello were honored post-humously their sacrifice, passion, courage and dedication.
I started clicking away at the screens on the walls. A powerful documentary was airing. It was the first time   any of the those  images and video had ever been seen by anyone who wasn’t around during those dark days The footage was rare, priceless and riveting and most of it had never been seen in Nigeria.


It had cost Silverbird a fortune to get it. Some might argue that it was insane to have paid so much money to a film archivist from another country so we could learn the truth about our own. Some might even say it was borderline extortion, but either way we are not to be completely absolved of sin in this matter. Our blatant disregard for proper documentation of our past has led to our being forced to oay heavily to learn more of our fading history.
In that instant, a light bulb of realization went off in my head. This was a call to arms. It was a call for the nation to faithfully document its past and present, for the sake of its future. It was a cry to ignite our patriotic curiosity, to know and record the facts and to document them for posterity sake.
As one chief speaker, who had fought the Biafran War as a child, quoted, “When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground”.
So much knowledge and wisdom is lost forever unless they found ways to document their experiences and share their sagacity.
And so the speakers in the room, led by the fiery rhetoric of SilverBird founder and Media Mogul Ben Bruce beseeched the former and present leaders in the room to “Please hand us your memoirs”.
He recalled the lone radio voice of the Biafran war, the only voice that narrated events to the people as their worlds were blowing up all around them, a voice now lost, silenced forever because no-one ever pressed ‘record’.
Where were the videos that could have answered so many questions that we still have today about that war?
Why were there no Nigerian film archives?
Why were there very few videos saved during the presidency of General Buhari?
And why was there no account as to how Kingsway stores, one of the most amazing supermarket chains in all of Africa, suddenly collapsed?
It was mind boggling that we could have intentionally destroyed visual and written evidence of our nation’s past.
Another speaker at the event urged Generals Danjuma, Gowon and Buhari to do something quickly or deprive future generations of their treasured, hallowed recollections on the events that shaped our country’s history.
I think as a nation  we need to cultivate the habit of documenting events and saving them for the future to celebrate and remember the past. We need to celebrate our history.

Do you agree with Mr Spiropoulous? Let us have your thoughts on how we can preserve our history for the coming generations.

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