Plot to set Southern Borno against Governor Shettima will fail – Aide
Governor Kashim Shettima and his godfather, ex-Governor Ali Modu Sheriff appear to have drawn a battle line over 2015. What happened?Governor Kashim Shettima does not draw battle lines with people. He doesn’t initiate fights and even when fights are launched against him, Shettima doesn’t fight back. He goes all out to make peace. This is […]
Governor Kashim Shettima and his godfather, ex-Governor Ali Modu Sheriff appear to have drawn a battle line over 2015. What happened?
Governor Kashim Shettima does not draw battle lines with people. He doesn’t initiate fights and even when fights are launched against him, Shettima doesn’t fight back. He goes all out to make peace. This is why some people take him for a weak man. Amazingly, he wins most of the battles launched against him. He simply absolves and triumphs over those who fight him. This is how God has created and blessed him. His strength lies in his absolute sincerity and politeness in dealing with people. He never relates with hypocrisy. He is never hostile, he is never the aggressor. No single person at the Government House in Maiduguri will tell you he ever heard Governor Shettima shouting at anyone or insulting anybody from the top officials down to cleaners, messengers, cooks and drivers. So, there is no battle line as far as Governor Shettima is concerned, and he has respect for the former Governor, Ali Modu Sheriff as one of the statesmen in Borno State.
In one publication, a former senator of Borno State, Hambagda accused Governor Shettima of discriminating against the people of southern Borno, in terms of support for victims of insurgency. What is your reaction?
I am surprised you mentioned Senator Hambagda because I haven’t heard anything about him since 2011. I think he has long relocated out of Borno, he wasn’t around all through. If he truly granted that interview and spoke that there is peace in Maiduguri where he was living before the crisis, then, I will say thanks to Governor Shettima, security agencies and youth volunteers for working for peace. Now, the Senator can come back to Maiduguri and continue his politics from where he stopped in 2011. But the issue of southern Borno is one of the failed tricks of some people who have constituted themselves into political aggressors against the governor. By the way, when last did Senator Hambagda visit Southern Borno probably in 2011 or earlier? Until the last five or so months, Boko Haram attacks were exclusively confined to the central and northern parts of Borno State. There were occasions in the past in which persons were killed in some parts of the south but cases of communities being sacked were largely in the central and northern parts of the state. That is why the focus of victims support was initially there largely. In the whole of southern Borno, it was only Gwoza that was having issues of communities being sacked and over N300 million has been put in there by government to support victims and reconstruct communities. Leaders of Gwoza were given the funds to take care of their people and they did. It was in 2014 that places like Chibok, Damboa, Askira/Uba and Hawul came under attack and were sacked. Before 2011, the governor carried out infrastructural projects in southern Borno because the place was peaceful enough for contractors to work. At every point, the governor had always approved funds for stakeholders of these local government areas to directly take charge of victims. Only recently, the governor approved huge funds for victims support in Askira/Uba, Damboa and others in the southern Borno. The particular difficulty with southern Borno is the vegetation. It appears Boko Haram is finding the vegetation suitable for their guerrilla war, unlike the northern Borno that has flat, desert land, which makes it possible for one to see an enemy within kilometers. Then, also, apart places like Biu and Gwoza, youths are not many in southern Borno because the majority of them are educated; they work in cities. Farmers and the elderly are mostly the inhabitants of villages of southern Borno, whereas there are many youths in the north and central. For this reason, Boko Haram faces less resistance from youths when they attack southern Borno. Going to some parts of southern Borno is particularly not encouraged by security agencies, mainly because of its vegetation and operational difficulties. This is why Governor Shettima hasn’t visited some places in the last few weeks.
But our political aggressors would come up with all sorts of cards. Someone told me recently that some campaign videos of the governor are being circulated in Biu, saying the Governor made promises in 2011 but failed to fulfill them. The fact that achievements are being discussed in Borno gives credit to Governor Shettima because if there is any governor who has got a good reason not to lay one block as part of infrastructure, it is Shettima. People forget all the problems in Borno because the governor works as if Borno is in normal times. People forget our problems. The state government is carrying out five capital projects which are dear to the hearts of the people in Biu. Some of them are the completed General Hospital in Biu town, schools and others. But our aggressors now say the projects are of no good quality. But they were executed by contractors from Biu. They are sons and daughters of that place. Some of the contractors are surprisingly among the aggressors today, criticizing their very own projects, just to score cheap political points. But you see the people of southern Borno are no fools. They cannot be manipulated; they are fully behind Governor Shettima, just like the people of the central and northern Borno. Our aggressors shamelessly even say the governor is biased against Christians, whereas highly respected Christian leaders and the majority of the Christian communities have always said it publicly that no Governor in Borno’s history had ever so regarded them as indigenes of the state. When there was a crisis in Maiduguri over the Danish blasphemous cartoon around 2005 or 2006, Christians were mainly targeted, the majority lost their homes and sources of livelihood, some were killed. The government at that time promised to compensate them after a committee he established recommended so, but he never offered support to a single victim of the Christians. They were completely deceived and dumped. Do you think the Christians in Borno have forgotten this deceit and abuse of their rights? Governor Shettima could never have done that, he has never discriminated against any people on any ethno-religious basis, he has tried to unite Borno people across the south, central and northern Borno, beyond ethnicity and religion. He achieved this by being fair in his dealings with all and sundry. So all these fresh plots to set the southern Borno people and Christians against the Governor will fail like a pack of cards.
A newspaper has consistently published stories that have raised concerns about transparency in Borno State. What is going on?
I have tried to avoid discussing the stories in the National Trail. We understand that the promoter is our former Commissioner for Information. We don’t want to be distracted from serious issues to what I could consider as a child’s play. Other newspaper publishers don’t use their outlets recklessly. Former Governor Orji Uzor Kalu owns The Sun and New Telegraph newspapers, Kalu is a PDP man, he was having problems with his successor, but The Sun never made the current Governor of Abia the subject of consistent blackmail with falsehoods. The Sun and New Telegraph do not indicate partisanship that is openly tilted towards the PDP. Chief Dokpesi is a PDP leader, his AIT and Raypower do not openly and recklessly align with the PDP. The Nation carries lots of stories that support the Presidency, they reflect PDP positions despite who is said to own the newspaper being an opposition leader. There is so much wisdom in someone separating his media investment from his personal views. But the governor is not in any way worried by the publications. He doesn’t read them. We all don’t because we have serious issues of insurgency which leaves innocent citizens killed.