Shettima: Jonathan’s Book, an Elementary Book of Fictions Lacking Courage

Borno State Governor, Alhaji Kashim Shettima, on Wednesday described the details contained in former President Goodluck Jonathan’s book as a clever attempt to sweep incontrovertible facts on the abduction of Chibok schoolgirls under the carpet.


The governor described the book, ‘My Transition Hours’, as an “elementary book of fictions, lacking courage.”

In a statement issued on Wednesday by his spokesman, Mallam Isa Gusua, the governor berated the former president, who in the book, among other allegations, said Shettima and the All Progressives Congress (APC) conspired in the kidnapping of the Chibok schoolgirls.



But the governor said: “It was clear to him after reading the former president's book that he still lives with poor understanding of issues under his presidency.”


Shettima said Jonathan's claim on page 31 that Boko Haram wanted a Muslim president rather than him as Christian was laughable since the insurgents actually began their deadliest attacks in Borno State under the regime of the late President Umaru Musa Yar'adua, a Muslim from northern Nigeria.


He said the former president deliberately omitted in chapter four of his new book, an investigative report submitted to him in June 2014 by the presidential facts-finding committee he constituted in May, 2014, which was mandated to gather evidence-based facts and circumstances on the abduction.


On the allegations contained in chapter four which is titled: ‘The Chibok schoolgirls affair’, the governor said Jonathan was wrong to have indicated that the schoolgirls abduction was a product of conspiracy by the then opposition APC in connivance with Borno State Government.

He noted that the former president, in the book, had also accused the Borno State Government and United States President Barack Obama's administration of undermining efforts to rescue the Chibok girls in 2014.




Shettima said the truth was that Jonathan never believed there was ever an abduction until rescue efforts were late, insisting that "the former president's elementary book of tales fell short of the courage required of him to publish findings by his own panel in chapter four of his book.


"The whole of last Tuesday night I took the pains of reading His Excellency, former President Goodluck Jonathan's ‘My Transition Hours’, from the first to the 177th page, I took particular interest in chapter four (the Chibok school girls affair) which has 42 paragraphs written on pages 27 to 36. I was amused that despite ‎admitting in paragraph 15 that he had (in May 2014) constituted a Presidential Fact-finding Committee under Brigadier General Ibrahim Sabo and many others to investigate the Chibok abduction, former President Jonathan refused to mention any part or whole of the findings by that panel which had submitted a highly investigative report submitted to him on June 20, 2014, after the panel held investigative meetings with the then Chiefs of Defence Staff, Army Staff, Air Staff, the Director General of DSS and Inspector General of Police (IG) in Borno State, visited Chibok, and met with parents of abducted schoolgirls, surviving students as well as interrogated officials of the school and the supervising ministry of education, officials of WAEC and analysed all correspondences. 




“What has become very clear is that the former president decided to sit on facts in his custody while he published, in an elementary standard, a book of fiction designed to pass guilty verdict to anyone but himself, with respect to the open failures of his administration to rescue our daughters and tackling the Boko Haram challenges."


The governor declared that by refusing to publish any part of his own panel's findings on the Chibok abduction, Jonathan's book was nothing short of “a presidential tale by midday."

The governor therefore advised President Jonathan to write a second book on account of his presidency which should contain the facts as have been presented to him regarding the Chibok abduction rather than the fiction he made public last Tuesday.