The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, has hit back at the opposition All Progressives Congress, after the APC said that recent allegations by a government-appointed Boko Haram negotiator, show that senior PDP members and allies of President Goodluck Jonathan are masterminds of the sect.
The APC had at a press conference on Tuesday, demanded the immediate trial of a former governor of Borno State, Modu Sheriff, a PDP member; and a former army chief, Azubuike Ihejirika, who were named by an Australian negotiator, Stephen Davis, as Boko Haram sponsors.
APC national chairman, Odigie Oyegun, had said that the revelations by Davis show the federal government had wrongly accused the APC of being behind Boko Haram. “They have called us all sorts of derogatory names, but failed to provide any shred of evidence to support their claim,” Oyegun said.
The APC chairman described Sheriff as a man known to all Nigerians as the founder of Boko Haram, but who has continued to escape justice and is now Jonathan’s ally. “He is a known ally of the president and he is not known to be under any immunity. Yet he was never arrested or even questioned,” he said.
Oyegun said that “The die is cast. The truth is finally out! Boko Haram sponsors have been exposed. They are within the ruling PDP. They are friends of President Jonathan.
“He cannot pretend not to know who they are and what they have done and are still doing. His myriad of intelligence agencies, including the SSS and the DMI, cannot pretend they do not have any information on these men,” Oyegun said, adding that while Sheriff was until recently a member of his party, the APC had always suspected that he was a mole, planted to hijack or at best weaken the new Party for the PDP.
“We know for sure that Ali Modu Sheriff was planted in the APC to help decimate our party. We confronted him openly during the merger negotiation but he denied vigorously. His surrogate for the post of the Chairman of the APC, Chief Tom Ikimi together with whom they planned to hijack the Party for the Presidency was firmly rejected.
“Realizing they have failed, they fled our party and returned to where they came from, and were duly embraced by their controllers,” Oyegun said, adding that “All through his time with our Party, every time they accused us of sponsoring Boko Haram, on the basis of his presence, we challenged them if they had evidence to arrest any of our members who is suspected to be a sponsor, they never did.
“They dared not, because Sheriff was their agent. Even if he had remained in the APC after we democratically encouraged him to go, they would still not have arrested him,” he said.
However, the PDP said the in a response on Wednesday that APC merely sought to use the allegations by Davis to launder its image.
The party said revelations by the Australian have merely confirmed that the APC was behind Boko Haram. “If not to achieve the self-serving purpose of exonerating the APC, why would Oyegun’s statement choose to be silent on the revelation by Davis that some people opposed to President Goodluck Jonathan used their connections to Boko Haram to frustrate his efforts?,” Olisa Metuh, PDP national publicity secretary said in a statement.
“We also wonder why the APC has chosen to ignore some of the revealing aspects of Dr. Davis’ interview concerning Boko Haram’s funding and sponsorship. Is it because they are not favourable to them?”
He alleged that Oyegun’s statement was a decoy to frustrate genuine effort at finding solution to the security challenges facing the nation to the advantage of the APC.
Metuh alleged that the same APC fought against moves by the British Parliament to investigate its involvement with terrorist elements as well as to divert attention from their meetings outside the shores of our country in their bid to promote insurgency in Nigeria.
He restated his party’s earlier stand in which it referred to the APC as a party with a Janjaweed ideology, alleging further that it had been promoting insurgency and acts of terrorism through the actions and utterances of its leaders.
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