Buhari may sue PDP over alleged Boko Haram links

Bode Olagoke

A former head of state and a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, has issued a seven-day ultimatum to the PDP to retract its accusation linking him with the Boko Haram terrorist acts, tender an unreserved public apology to him or face a legal action.

A statement he issued yesterday in Kaduna, Buhari said:” ”I cannot sit back and allow my image, and that of my political party be smeared by falsehood in the name of politics.”
He said the widely publicised and serious allegations made against him by the PDP and its spokesman, Olisa Metuh, to the effect that his utterances were responsible for the current state of insecurity and terrorism bedeviling Nigeria, were absolutely without basis

“I take very serious exception to this grave accusation against me by the PDP Publicity Secretary. It is a false allegation aimed at tarnishing my image and reputation in the hope of destroying my political and electoral standings, and that of my party, the APC, in the country.
‘”Firstly, it is public knowledge that Boko Haram as a terror organization long preceded the 2011 presidential elections. My utterances or lack of them on the 2011 presidential election could not, therefore, have created nor sustained the Boko Haram insurgency.

“Secondly, the PDP government of President Goodluck Jonathan constituted the Sheikh Ahmed Lemu Panel of Inquiry to investigate and report on the post-election violence in some parts of the country. The panel discharged its duties within its terms of reference and submitted its Report to the President.
“Thirdly, 2011 was not the first time I contested a presidential election and was declared defeated, it was the third! If I had had no cause to ‘beckon on my supporters to go on lynching spree’ in the two previous occasions, I would have had no cause to change in 2011, and I did not.”