A former Minister of Aviation, and spokesperson of former President Goodluck Jonathan’s campaign organization, Femi Fani-Kayode, has said that Nigerians asked for the recent upsurge in Boko Haram attacks by refusing to renew Mr. Jonathan’s mandate, instead voting in Muhammadu Buhari as president.
Mr. Fani-Kayode said Mr. Buhari had always been sympathetic to Boko Haram.
“Anyone that honestly believed that a man who secretly shares the same vision and core principles of Boko Haram and who spent many years defending them can do anything but give them a free hand when he comes to power is living in cuckoo land,” he said in a Facebook post Tuesday.
The remark was posted first on Monday, but was deleted before being re-posted on Tuesday.
Nigeria has in the last two weeks witnessed an escalation of Boko Haram’s bloody campaign, with several suicide bomb and gun attacks targeting places of worship, communities and public places, killing hundreds of people.
The latest attack occurred early Tuesday at a local government office in Zaria, Kaduna State.
Twenty-five people were killed when a suspected suicide bomber detonated an explosive where civil servants had gathered for data verification in the Sabon Gari area of Zaria.
About 400 Nigerians are estimated to have been killed by the sect in the last five weeks.
Mr. Fani-Kayode, who recently changed his name to Femi Olukayode, in celebration of his court victory in a corruption case, said he was not surprised with the recent bombings and killings.
“I am not surprised by the resurgence of Boko Haram and their new-found barbarity, courage and zeal,” he said.
He also said the cause of the Boko Haram sect may have been aided by the removal of military checkpoints in towns and along highways.
He said the Nigerian government is also transferring Boko Haram suspects to Prisons in the eastern part of the country in order to ”spread the word” adding that no less than 182 Boko Haram suspects were released on the president’s orders just a few days ago.
“Is all this just a coincidence or is something that is dark and sinister now afoot in our country? “
“Whatever each of us may or may not believe, one thing is clear- that Boko Haram now have powerful friends and secret allies right at the epicenter of power and those friends and allies are running the affairs of the country,” he said.
Mr. Fani-Kayode said there is a much wider picture unfolding which the Nigerian people have yet to see and which they find difficult to accept, understand or comprehend.
“There is a hideous and frightful hidden agenda which is slowly manifesting before our very eyes. Though we warned them, the Nigerian people wanted ‘change’ so they must live with the consequences of their choice,” he said.
He also said one of those consequences is the new-found “audacity, courage, growing power and rising strength of Boko Haram”, while another is the “resurgence of a clearly ethnic agenda which is designed to leave no-one in doubt about who really owns Nigeria and who the slaves are”.
He said, yet another is the destruction and demystification of a national leader of the APC, Bola Tinubu, and his “Yoruba loyalists by his erstwhile northern allies in the APC”.
“Only a fool did not see that one coming and I am rather surprised that Tinubu’s followers are now crying foul and alleging that there is a northern conspiracy. Didn’t they know that before? Were they not warned over and over again?
“There are many other grave consequences which the Nigerian people will witness, in a most harrowing and frightful manner, in the next few months and years.
“May God deliver our people and our nation and may we learn to make the right choices,” he said.
