TELL Magazine

Says President Jonathan meant well for Nigeria but was victim of calumny campaign

…Threat to abduct the president joke taken too far – Temlong, Ex-MNJTF Commander

As a benumbed nation is still processing the threat by dare-devil terrorists to abduct and kill President Muhammadu Buhari, the Kaduna State governor, Nasir El-Rufai, and other high profile politicians in the country, a Kaduna-based human rights activist and chairman, Dialogue Group, Mahdi Shehu, has brazenly told the president to admit failure to effectively govern the country and throw in the towel. Shehu, who was guest on Tuesday’s edition of Arise TV programme, Morning Show, insisted that any government that fails to discharge the constitutional obligation of protecting lives and properties of the citizens has no reason remaining in charge, adding that Nigeria is the only country where you have people fixated on power in spite of visible failure.

Lamenting that Nigeria manifests symptoms of a failed State, the fiery human rights activist who bemoaned how former president, Goodluck Jonathan was blackmailed out of office, described him as “a victim of calumny campaign”, and a good and honest man who meant well for the country.

A co-panelist on the programme, John Temlong, a retired army general, and former Commander, Multinational Joint Task Force, MNJTF, described the threat by the terrorists in a viral video in which male victims of the March 28 Kaduna-Abuja train attack were being flogged, as a “joke taken too far”, and “a battle of wits between the terrorists and the government over who controls the citizens and so what they use is terror as their tactics”.

According to Temlong, “I think the main aim of the terrorists is to create fear to be able to control the population … Terror itself is meant to instill fear, and so what they are doing is a psychological war. They are trying to tell the Nigerian State or Nigerians that they can kidnap the president and the governor of Kaduna State and others, and that would create fear in itself because if you say you can kidnap the president and commander-in-chief, then what will happen to ordinary citizens? I think it’s part of their gimmicks to create and instill fear in political authority and those in authority, and the citizens at large. It’s a joke taken too far”.