Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari (C) sits with Aisha Buhari, the new first lady of Nigeria (3rd L) and outgoing president Goodluck Jonathan (R) during his inauguration in Abuja, Nigeria 29 May 2015. Muhammadu Buhari was inuagurated as president of Nigeria at a ceremony in the capital Abuja. May 30, 2015| Credit: Anadolu AgencyPresident Muhammadu Buhari and former President Goodluck Jonathan are at war over claims by the presidency that Mr. Jonathan has links to the Niger Delta Avengers blowing up oil and gas installations in the oil rich but impoverished and polluted region.
On Thursday, the presidency told journalists that it had ordered a discreet investigation of former president, Goodluck Jonathan, and his wife, Patience, over the spate of bombings of oil and gas facilities in the Niger Delta.
Newspapers quoted a “top government source”, who was allegedly relying on “intelligence reports”, as saying that the government has now been established that some of the oil installations bombed in the Niger Delta had actually been mined while President Jonathan was in power, just before the 2015 election, by some of the militants and operatives known to be very close to him.
Mining the pipelines means placing mines or bombs on them ready to detonate them.
Online newspaper, Premium Times, quoted the alleged “top source”, as saying that “the mining was meant to be a “Plan B should Mr. Jonathan be removed from office.
As in all leaked information, the “top source” requested not to be named because of the sensitive nature of the matter, the newspapers said.
However, the alleged “top source” was quoted as saying:
“The plan then was to cause confusion if the 2015 presidential election did not go as expected, in favour of the then incumbent.”
“However, when the former president surprisingly conceded the election to President Mohammadu Buhari, according to the source, there was both disappointment and confusion in the camp of those who had designed the plan, causing a suspension of the whole agenda.
“But by February this year, it was learnt, the plan was reopened as several of the backers were getting investigated on different corruption cases.
“Mr. Jonathan himself himself was concerned that himself and his wife could be prosecuted, including on money-laundering charges where investigators said evidence against the wife has already been amassed.
“It was at that point that the bombing activities under the banner of the Niger Delta Avengers started.
“Even the former President himself had been reported while on a foreign trip as saying he knew he was under probe. This was after the plan to start the bombing had become fully operational according to intelligence reports.
“After the Plan B was restored, the ‘militant operatives’ who mined the oil and gas installations only had to arrange for how they would be detonated at a distance at the wish and timing of the NDA, their backers and sponsors said to include the former president, his wife, Government Tompolo, Mr. Kinglsey Kuku and Olisa Metuh among others.
“The mining was done by some of the militants that the previous government had trained under the amnesty programme, and those who acquired the needed expertise, besides their knowledge of the Niger Delta creeks and terrain.
“Experts working with the federal government are now said to be working to determine how to discover if there are still many more oil and gas installations that have been mined and explore the best means of demining them.”
In addition to the mined installations, intelligence reports, according to the same “top official”, also stated that the NDA and their backers and operatives also had the capacity to dive in and out of water to damage and bomb the installations, adding that the federal government had drawn up the full list of all those that were trained and equipped in those skills under the Amnesty Programme.
The alleged “top government source” added that “the game plan of Mr. Jonathan and his associates backing the NDA was to cause enough economic damage in order to force the Buhari administration to pursue a political solution to the corruption cases on which investigations were already advancing against them.
“This is to avoid prosecution and the attendant unprecedented shame of having a former president go to jail.”
According to another presidency source quoted by Premium Times, “one of the reasons Mr. Jonathan visited Aso Rock earlier this month was because he was afraid for himself, but more readily for his wife against whom silent investigations had already advanced significantly.”
Some MEND members had recently alleged that former President Jonathan came up with the name Niger Delta Avengers himself, a claim he has since denied.
The intelligence reports, a presidency official said, confirmed that it was the intervention of the former president that actually stopped the militants from the symbolic announcement to declare a republic earlier this month.
But on Friday, former President Jonathan shared a Facebook post written by his former online spokesman, Mr. Reno Omokri, describing the report as cooked from the presidency to get him.
“The coordinated attack on the integrity and credibility of former President Goodluck Jonathan is unfortunate. That the same hastily cooked up lies were reported simultaneously and almost word for word by The Nation, saharareporters.com, premiumtimesng.com and other known client media of the powers that be is evidence of the fact that someone powerful is out to get the former President, ” Mr. Omokri said.
He added: “Let us even consider the report in itself. One of the conjectures used by the propagators of this lie to pull the wool over the eyes of Nigerians is contained in this quote “It has been known in government circles that Jonathan may be behind the NDA. The speed with which he denied the allegation spoke volumes.”
“There has never been such a childish and amateurish justification for sullying the hard earned peaceful reputation of a man like former President Jonathan as this.
“When in November of 2012 Boko Haram named Major General Muhammadu Buhari (rtd), now the current President of Nigeria, as one of its chosen mediators did he not quickly and immediately deny and reject the nomination by Boko Haram?
“Flowing from the same warped reasoning, his speedy denial is also evidence that he had a hand in the terrorism occasioned by the radical Islamic sect, but we know that is not true because Boko Haram tried to kill Mr. Buhari.
“If it were that Dr. Jonathan did not quickly and completely deny any links with the Niger Delta Avengers and any other militants group, then the sponsors of this wishy washy story would have changed their tactics and would have said that his non denial is evidence of his complicity.
“Another so called evidence used against the former President in this sponsored report is the fact that he called for peace and urged militants not to declare a republic or contemplate secession.
“In the disturbed thinking of the sponsors of this report, this is evidence against Dr. Jonathan?
“Has it occurred to these demented persons that this is precisely what a genuine statesman should do in times like these? In September of 2011, former President Olusegun Obasanjo visited Maiduguri to see the family of the late founder of Boko Haram, Mohammed Yusuf, in search of peace. He was applauded for such a courageous act, as he should have been, because that is what is expected of statesmen.
“In other climes, they give people Nobel Peace Prizes for prevailing on belligerents to sheathe their swords, but apparently in Nigeria, it is evidence of your complicity. Should Nigerians be surprised then that passers by refuse to help those attacked by armed robbers or accident victims on the roadside like the Good Samaritan? If you do, the government may accuse you of being the perpetrator instead of the savior.
“But these happenings are not surprising to me. We were all witnesses to the threat to withdraw the licenses of the two major fertilizer manufacturers in Nigeria, Notore Petrochemical and Indorama Eleme Petrochemical, for providing the materials used by terrorists and militants to make Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs).
“Now, according to this new tale inserted into the media, it was Dr. Jonathan who instructed militants to mine oil installations before the May 29th, 2015 handover date.
“Now it is confirmed that liars do not have a good memory and so must contradict themselves. If the oil installations were rigged with mines the question to be asked is are mines made from fertilizers? Can they not get their story right?
“There is a troubling pattern here. It seems that any time Dr. Jonathan is advancing on the world stage for his humanitarian and pro-democracy activities, these fallacious stories appear in the media to distract him.
“When he was on his very successful international speaking tour earlier in the year, the lie was told that he was away on exile.
“Now that he is back from his second successful outing as head of the African Union Elections Observation Mission to Zambia the usual suspects are up to their old tricks. Who knows what they would do next when they behold the great things that Dr. Jonathan is set to do very shortly?
“And to the Minister of Information, Dr. Lai Mohammed, who was quoted in the said report as saying “these allegations have refused to go away and those making the allegations are not backing out”, let me remind him that there are allegations against him that have refused to go away.
“In fact, the allegations against Lai Mohammed come with documentary evidence. We remember that he was alleged to have begged his subordinates at the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) for a ‘loan’ of ₦13 million against civil service rules and against the rules of public decency.
“Have those allegations gone away, Mr. Lai Mohammed? Should we then accept them as true? Of course not! Why? Because allegations, no matter how weighty, are not evidence.
“Like I said before, I am ever proud of Dr. Goodluck Jonathan. Somebody asked me what I gained by working with Goodluck Jonathan. My response was that I learnt wisdom. I learnt that It is better to lose power and gain honor than to gain power and lose honor. I learnt not to defend myself when my enemies falsely accuse me. The same media that gleefully reported their lies will eventually expose them when they see that the public is no longer buying their lies.
“Finally, I learnt that the best revenge against those who criticize how you do your job is to step aside and let them have the job and watch them underperform in such a manner until they get so desperate that the only achievements they can boast of are the ones you achieved during your so called underperformance. May God bless Dr. Jonathan for teaching me such wisdom! In Jesus name”.