TheCable

Akin Osuntokun, a chieftain of the Coalition for Nigeria Movement (CNM), has insisted that there was a bomb attack in Borno state.

Osuntokun was reported to have first made statement on the attack while speaking on Politics Today, a Channels Television programme, on Tuesday.

He was quoted to have said not less than 88 persons were killed in the attack.

Femi Adesina, presidential spokesman, had accused Osuntokun of spreading falsehood but the CNM chieftain hit back at Adesina, saying his statement is “another demonstration of the penchant of this government for leaving the substance to chase shadows”.

“I’m not the Red Cross that has the institutional capacity to keep every detail of these crimes against humanity,” the statement read.

“Does it matter that 68 were killed in Maimalari, rather than 88 in Maiduguri, and we are talking of the same day?

“Okay, 68 people were killed in a Borno village, rather than 88 in Maiduguri. At the frequency of the prevailing dispensation of daily bloodletting, who wouldn’t get the specifics and details mixed up? The irony of the statement from the presidency calling me a liar started with an egregious lie against me.

“I had called Channels Television to confirm the veracity of this scandalous attribution. Of course, it was an outright fiction conjured by the presidential spokesman to embellish his narrative of a fundamental slander of the Buhari government.

“There was nowhere in the television discussion I spoke of a bomb blast. Wedded to this lie, Mr. Adesina went on to crow that ‘Sallah Day had passed quietly and peacefully without even a firecracker going off, let alone bomb blast.’

“Yet, according to Reuters report, 63 people were reportedly killed and villages burnt in terrorist attack in Maimalari village in Borno state the previous day. And who knows how many situations of carnage that went unreported that day. This is the idea of a peaceful Sallah day the president of Nigeria is boasting about.

“You will imagine that a government with so much disastrous scorecard on security will be more modest in advertising itself on security governance and competence. You will think that it is not the same government whom a former army chief of staff accused of complicity in the genocidal militia crisis.

“Does this mix up make me the enemy of the people, rather than Femi Adesina who threatened Nigerians to concede their land to terrorists at the pain of being murdered? Does it make me more a liar than President Buhari who repeatedly claimed that the price of crude oil per barrel had been over 100 dollars since 1999?

“In public accountability, who should the country worry more about between me and those who hold the reins of government who are pointing attention at the speck in my eyes while ignoring the beam lodged permanently in their eyesight?”