Former President Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria has taken Lai Mohammed, Minister of Information and Culture to the cleaners. He spoke through Reno Omokri: “Below are  factual timelines with dates, names and location. I challenge Lai Mohammed to rebut them with his own facts. On March 12, 2014, the then minister of state for education, Mr. Nyesom Wike, wrote the governors of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa and advised them not to hold the West African Senior Secondary Certificate Examinations in areas susceptible to the Boko Haram insurgency, which was ignored by Borno State governor.”

“April 14, 2014: Contrary to the advice given by the Peoples Democratic Party-led Federal Government of President Goodluck Jonathan, the All Progressives Congress-led government of Governor Kashim Shettima, for reasons best known to it, chose to ignore that advice and held the WASSCE examinations in Chibok, a mainly Christian town that was susceptible to attacks from the Islamic extremist group, Boko Haram.”

“On the day in question, the girls of Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok, were kidnaped by Boko Haram while preparing to write their final physics examinations. Curiously, both the Principal of the school and her Vice were not on the school’s campus, as the girls were inside a dormitory. The Principal of the school, Hadjiya Asabe Kwambura, later claimed to have gone to Maiduguri for a ‘medical check up’ on the day of the abduction. It seemed very inauspicious for a principal of a school to schedule a non emergency ‘medical check up’ for a time when the school she presided over was having, perhaps, its most important activity of the year, school leaving examinations.”

“This same woman later changed her story when she told Fox News that she had gone to Maiduguri to buy medicines and was informed by her daughter about the kidnap. But how did her daughter, a student of the school, avoid being kidnapped? It is noteworthy that this particular principal was never reprimanded or disciplined or in anyway made to take responsibility for this obvious dereliction of duty by the Borno State government, which owns the school.”

“Flash forward to April 2, 2016: Governor Kashim Shettima confessed in an interview with Premium Times that he, the chief security officer of the state, did not inform then President Jonathan when the girls were kidnapped for reasons best known to him.”

“April 17, 2014: Exactly three days after the kidnap, President Jonathan, who had not been formally informed of the issue because of the deliberate refusal of the APC-led government of Borno State to brief him, called for an emergency meeting at the Presidential Villa after the military independently alerted him.”

“Multiple dates in April, 2004: The military, principally the Air Force, were given conflicting information as to what direction the fleeing terrorists took when they captured the girls. Were these conflicting information a deliberate effort to send the military on a wild goose chase?”

“Jonathan sets up a fact finding mission to determine the facts of the kidnap and stresses that the mission’s work would not interfere with search and rescue efforts. After consistent confused and contradictory information from the Borno state Government and various other authority figures, the Presidency invited the principal actors in the Chibok saga to the Presidential Villa to ascertain the truth. The Presidency was shocked at the non-appearance by officials of the Borno State government.”

“The governor’s wife, who was invited, shunned the event and when the then First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan, saw the scanty representation from  Borno, she famously exclaimed: ‘na only you waka come’?”

“October 15, 2014, during the Presidential declaration by then candidate Muhammadu Buhari, now the incumbent President, Audu Ogbeh, at that time the Director General of the campaign (he was later replaced) said on live television that the pressure group, Bring Back our Girls, led by a virulent critic of the Jonathan administration, Oby Ezekwesili, also said that the #BBOG campaign is led by ‘members of our party, the APC.’ This is an exact quote and reflects the politicization of the saga. “From the above, it is clear that Nigeria’s minister of information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed has an estranged relationship with the truth.”