President Goodluck Jonathan has linked former Governor of Borno State, Ali Modu Sheriff, with the extremist Boko Haram sect.

According to PREMIUM TIMES, Jonathan linked Sheriff with the terror group in an April 2013 video during his visit to Borno State.

This is coming barely two weeks after Nigeria’s secret police, the State Security Service (SSS), cleared the former governor of any link to Boko Haram.

PREMIUM TIMES said the video it obtained suggested that President Jonathan is personally aware and strongly convinced of the former’s governor’s longstanding relationship with the founder of the sect.

The online news portal also revealed that it obtained a leaked security intelligence dispatch that also suggested Sheriff has link with the sect.

The memo claimed Sheriff personally oversaw the training and deployment of fighters from the Abeche region in Chad.

In Abeche, Sheriff operated from the lodge of the Chadian President, Idris Deby, the memo claimed.

Meanwhile, in the video clip, shot in April 2013 during a visit he made to Borno State, Jonathan was heard describing Sheriff, who was then a member of the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) as a “friend” of Mohammed Yusuf, the man who founded and led Boko Haram for years.

Yusuf died while in the custody of the Nigeria Police after he and a number of his followers were arrested following a bloody clash between the sect members and law enforcement.

During his visit to Borno in April 2013 to persuade Borno leaders and residents to accept a heightened military presence in the state until the insurgency is checked, Jonathan suggested that Boko Haram evolved, blossomed and took up arms against the Nigerian state during Sheriff’s tenure as governor of the troubled North-East state.

As commander-in-chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces, President Jonathan regularly has access to a multiplicity of security reports, and many believed he spoke from a position of knowledge at the time.

The video features the president, dressed in agbada and a cap, and clutching two microphones in his left hand while he addressed his audience, trying to defend the militarization of Borno and other states in the northeast region.

In his speech, Jonathan argued that the militarization of the region began after the crises that trailed the murder of the Boko Haram founder.

“When Yusuf was killed, that was the beginning of the crisis…” the president continued his speech.

Yusuf was the founder of the Boko Haram sect. His extrajudicial murder in 2009 marked the beginning of the deadly insurgency that is now threatening the entire northeast region of Nigeria.

Sheriff’s alleged link with Boko Haram dates back to his days as governor of Borno between 2003 and 2011.

Multiple security sources, politicians from his home state and residents of Borno claim Sheriff was close to the group and and its leadership, and indeed appointed a member of the sect to his cabinet as commissioner.

Recently, an Australian negotiator, working with the Nigerian government, Stephen Davis, also claimed that the sect’s top members told him Sheriff was a key sponsor of their activities.

On December 16, the SSS exonerated Sheriff after it paraded six men – including a former special assistant to current Borno State governor, Kashim Shettima.

The SSS claimed the suspects admitted fabricating the scenarios the Australian negotiator relied on to make his claims.

www.pmnewsnigeria.com

Interesting