You Contributed To Boko Haram Insurgency – Presidency Replies Atiku

The Presidency yesterday chided former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar over his remarks on the security situation in the country. It said a number of his past utterances contributed to the escalation of insurgent activities in the North.  The presidential aspirant on the platform of the All Progressives Congress, APC, had at a media conference on Monday in Abuja lamented the security situation in the north eastern section of Nigeria.

He stated that the Federal Government hadn’t done enough to tackle the Boko Haram sect, adding that President Goodluck Jonathan may go down as the only real Nigerian Commander-in-Chief to have ever lost territory to terrorists.  Responding, Special Assistant to the President on Public Affairs, Doyin Okupe, accused Atiku of causing the insecurity ravaging the land via a comment he made four years ago.

Speaking in Abuja at the Public Affairs Forum, a programme organised by his office for ministers to offer account of their stewardship, Okupe recalled that in the build up as much as the 2011 general elections, Atiku quoted a statement by late US President John Kennedy that

 “those who make peaceful change inevitable will make violent change inevitable”.

He explained the former vice president made the remark at the Northern Stakeholders’Forum meeting in 2010.

Continuing, Okupe called “unfortunate”, a scenario where people who desperately stoked the fire of insurgency were now laying the blame on the shoulders of a government already spending so much time to place out the fire.

He noted so it was insufficient patriotism that made Atiku to talk down on the nation’s military, which he hopes to lead, if elected President of the Federal Republic.

The presidential aide wondered why the former vice president, who’s from Adamawa State, among the states under constant attacks by Boko Haram, has not even taken any hard position on terrorism.

He advised the presidential aspirant to master from political leaders in other climes who drop the toga of partisanship in moments of national crisis by supporting their governments to improve the hope of citizens and defeat enemies of civilisation.

The presidential aide said President Goodluck Jonathan wouldn’t be distracted by negative comments from Atiku and several others, whose only concern was politics as opposed to nation building.

Okupe assured that his principal was spending so much time with security chiefs and community stakeholders to replace peace to the northern area of the country in the shortest possible time.