Chibok Girls - Prepare To Face Prosecution After Leaving Office, Fani-Kayode Tells Gov Shettima

The director of media and publicity of the Peoples Democratic Party Presidential Campaign Organisation (PDPPCO), Chief Femi Fani-Kayode, has alleged that the abducted Chibok schoolgirls would have been saved from the ordeal to which they have been subjected for the past 329 days had the governor taken the advice and acted in accordance with the security reports that the town was not safe for the examinations.

In response, Governor Shettima said that Fani-Kayode’s statements are not to be taken seriously as he is only begging to be reported in newspapers and shown on television screens with the sole aim of creating an impression that he is working.

In a statement issued yesterday in Abuja by his special assistant (Media), Mr Sufuyan Ojeifo, Fani-Kayode said “Shettima will not be governor forever and when he is no longer in office, his role in the Chibok affair would be investigated and if found wanting, he would be prosecuted.”

He accused the governor of reflecting the thinking of his party over the whole mess that his insensitivity allowed to happen.

The statement reads: “The governor of Borno State, Kashim Shettima is the most irresponsible, insensitive and callous governor in Nigeria. He is a wicked man whose mindset reflects the thinking of his party, All Progressives Congress (APC). He, more than anybody else, is responsible for the abduction of the Chibok girls.

“And he should bear full responsibility for it. The man should shut up and bow his head in shame because it was due to his irresponsibility as the chief security officer of Borno State that those little girls in Chibok were abducted, raped, sold into slavery and subjected to terror.

“The circumstances that led to the abduction of the innocent girls, who were writing their examination in an environment that was everything but secure, underscored the governor’s negligence”.

Meanwhile, Governor Shettima has also issued a statement through his spokesman, Isa Gusau, where he argued that Fani-Kayode was only trying to get attention as it is public knowledge that a presidential fact-finding committte on the missing Chibok schoolgirls had declared him free from any complicity in the unfortunate incident.

The governor stated, “Long before Fani-Kayode was appointed, his employer and our dear president, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan had in 2014, set up a Presidential Fact-finding Committee on the missing Chibok schoolgirls which was made up of serving and retired security officials, civil societies, elders from Chibok, the Christian Association of Nigeria, Muslims, journalists, labour groups, the National Council of Women Societies and many others with the mandate of establishing facts concerning the circumstances that led to the kidnap of the schoolgirls. After being in Borno State for nearly two weeks, the committee was in Chibok and met with all those it marked as stakeholders; the committee met all security chiefs in Borno State, met officials of WAEC in Borno, met virtually everybody and analysed documents, at the end of which a national newspaper reported on the findings of the committee; the committee gave a clean bill to Governor Kashim Shettima as he was rather a traumatised victim that was doing so well in managing the security challenges in the state. The report is there and no one has so far contradicted what ThisDay exclusively reported as per the report of the committee.”

Going further, he added, “Fani-Kayode that is seated in Abuja and issuing statements didn’t have the patriotism to follow President Jonathan on his recent visit to liberated communities at least for it to be on record that he was once in Borno State. He sits and speaks with so much arrogance and ignorance. But like I said yesterday, we don’t take Femi Fani-Kayode seriously and nobody does in Nigeria. He had pronounced a different group guilty over the issue of the Chibok girls long before now, so if he is reversing himself over that like he contradicted himself on many other issues, there is nothing new.” (Leadership)