Jonathan: Buhari failed to end Boko Haram despite sect’s trust

Former President Goodluck Jonathan on Friday revealed that the Boko Haram insurgents once nominated ex-President Muhammadu Buhari to negotiate with the Federal Government on their behalf.

 

Speaking in Abuja at the public presentation of Scars, a book authored by former Chief of Defence Staff, Gen. Lucky Irabor (rtd), Jonathan said the sect’s choice of Buhari made him believe the crisis could have been resolved when Buhari became president.

 

But according to him, the insurgency not only persisted under Buhari, it grew more complicated—proving the menace was deeper than many Nigerians assumed.

 

Jonathan said: “One of the committees we set up then, the Boko Haram nominated Buhari to lead their team to negotiate with the government. So I was feeling that if they nominated Buhari to represent them and have a discussion with the government, then when Buhari took over, it could have been an easy way to negotiate with them and they would have handed over their guns. But it was still there till today.”

 

The former president argued that the group’s operations went beyond hunger and poverty, pointing to the sophisticated weapons at their disposal as evidence of foreign sponsorship.

 

He also described the abduction of the Chibok schoolgirls in 2014 as a permanent scar on his administration, stressing that the nation must consider a carrot-and-stick approach to resolving the insurgency.

 

Jonathan urged military officers and leaders who engaged Boko Haram at different levels to document their accounts, just as actors of the Nigerian Civil War did, so that the true motives of the insurgents could be understood.