In a statement signed by Senior Special Assistant
(Media) to the President, Garba Shehu reads:
FULL STATEMENT:
“Our attention has been drawn to a
piece published on April 12, 2016, in The Telegraph (London) paper, by one Con
Coughlin (identified as ‘Defence Editor’), and titled, ‘Nigeria using UK aid to
persecute president’s political foes rather to fight Boko Haram.’
“The piece is not only full of
factual inaccuracies, it also betrays a shocking ignorance of Nigeria and the
country’s ongoing war against terrorism. “Mr Coughlin’s editorial tactic is to
quote unnamed “senior officials” and “Western diplomats” and “Western
officials” and “political opponents” making fact-free and unfounded statements.
It also appears that he sought out only those opinions which suited and
reinforced his disgracefully false headline.
Nowhere in the piece is there
anything that suggests he attempted to contact the Nigerian government for its
own side of the story. “Coughlin writes that “American officials are also angry
that $2.1 billion of aid given to the Nigerian military to tackle Boko Haram
has not been properly accounted for.”
It does not occur to him that the $2.1
billion he refers to was budgeted for and wholly spent by the government that
President Buhari and his party defeated in the March 2015 presidential
elections, and that one of President Buhari’s priorities has been investigating
the misuse of those funds.
“It also does not appear to occur to
Mr. Coughlin that the “political opponents” he is falsely accusing President
Buhari of “targeting” and “persecuting” are actually on trial on account of how
they spent the $2.1 billion in question.
Mr. Coughlin is equally unaware of the
fact that the investigating panel set up by Mr. Buhari to probe the $2.1
billion recently published a preliminary report that confirmed that much of
that money was indeed looted or mis-spent by the accused persons, and that the
government has started to recover the funds. “Coughlin accuses President
Buhari’s government of attempting to cover-up the abductions of 400 women and
children “abducted last year by militants from the Nigerian town of Damasak.”
“This is absolutely untrue. The
Damasak abductions he’s referring to, which were recently widely reported, took
place, not “last year” as he says, but in late 2014, well before Mr. Buhari was
elected President of Nigeria. (And, by the way, President Buhari came to power
on May 29, 2015, not July, as Coughlin reports).
“A simple search by Mr. Coughlin of
his paper’s archives would have revealed these facts. A simple fact-check by
his copy-editors would have spared the Telegraph the embarrassment of
publishing this drivel. “There are several other inaccuracies and baseless
statements in the piece, but Mr. Coughlin is too enamoured of his anonymous
sources to realise they might be misleading him, or be as ignorant about the
situation as he is. The suggestion that Boko Haram is going “from strength to
strength” is an eminently laughable one; not even Nigeria’s opposition party
would make such an absurd claim.
“Since President Buhari took office, schools
in Borno State, shut for more than one year under the previous government, have
reopened. The same applies to the airport in Maiduguri, shut down in December
2013 after a devastating Boko Haram attack on the nearby Air Force Base.
“Thousands of Internally Displaced
Persons (IDPs) have now started returning home. Last Sunday, El-Kanemi Warriors
Football Club played its first game in its home base of Maiduguri in more than
two seasons. Until now they had been forced to play home games outside the
region, on account of security concerns. There are several more examples of how
the people of the region are finally getting a chance to rebuild their lives,
as the Nigerian Armed Forces and a Multinational Joint Task Force continue
their work of routing the terrorists.
“Mr. Coughlin not only sounds like a
spokesperson for the very people whose corruption and mismanagement allowed
Boko Haram to bring Nigeria to its knees – and whose disastrous legacy
President Buhari has spent the last one year redeeming Nigeria from – he is
also guilty of failing to observe the most basic rules of responsible
journalism. “Mr Coughlin needs a refresher course on responsible journalism as
much as he needs a crash course on Nigeria. Until he submits himself to these,
we’re afraid he will continue to embarrass not only himself, but also the
revered British media institution that is the Telegraph.”
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