Boko Haram Funds: Presidency Accuses, U.K Newspaper of Publishing Lies, Inaccuracies

The Presidency has said reports from The Telegraph, a United Kingdom based

Newspaper, accusing President Mohammadu Buhari of diverting millions of
Pounds meant to fight Boko Haram to fighting opposition politicians, are
false and baseless.

A Statement signed by Presidential Spokesman, Malam Garba Shehu said
Telegraph report contained “inaccuracies” and attributions from unnamed
sources.
The statement read in full.

“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.”