Says “Haliru Sani’s Statements Are Effusions of A Deluded Mind”
The Ibrahim Babangida camp has at last offered a response to the allegation of sponsorship of the Boko Haram sect levelled against the former military President. A statement issued by General Babangida’s Media Spokesman denied any links with Sani Haliru, the repented Boko Haram member.
The statement raeds inter alia “We feel a deep sense of concern that the country is going through these obvious challenges of insecurity and bad leadership that are threatening the very fabric of the country’s foundation. We have read and assimilated the effusions of a deluded mind by name Sheik Sani Haliru, who for want of very cheap relevance decided to mention the highly respected name of IBB as one of the “sponsors” of what he called Boko Haram. From our first reading, we felt it would amount to giving undue relevance to a confused mind if we volunteer a response, but for our teeming supporters, associates and friends of IBB, and for the price we owe history, we decided to offer this disclaimer.
First, General IBB cannot in his frame of mind remember any of such names called Sheik Sani Haliru whether as an Almajiri or a jihadist or both. Reading through the interview, one is easily confronted with a number of inconsistencies and well orchestrated conclusions that are spuriously out of place. One, Dele Giwa did not die of suicide bombing as claimed by Sani Haliru. It is public knowledge that he died of parcel bomb and the latest insight by Rev.Chris Omeben as published in Sunday Sun of 5th February, 2012 will form an instructive reading. Secondly, we have every cause to believe that the interview was carefully scripted to convey the message intended and not one conducted under a question and answer basis.
The responses of the said Sani Haliru attest to this fact. From that premise therefore, it will be save to conclude that the interview was structured by certain agents of government to satisfy pre-determined position. Thirdly, the questions by the interviewer are also leading questions, tending to achieve the predetermined end of the initiators of the interview. The emphasis on seeing Islam as a religion of violence is a clear indication of this motive. Fourthly, on the one hand, the interviewee declared himself to be a converted Christian, while on the other hand, he was asking for someone that will connect him to God. He talked about his fear of going to jail, why will a man of God be afraid of incarceration or jail if the cause he is pursuing is truly altruistic? How could someone with facts about Boko Haram be saying that he is afraid the SSS will arrest him if he ventured those facts, when the whole wide world is patiently waiting to get a road map out of the Boko Haram pogrom? There are also instances where third person narrative tenor is given to Sheik Sani Haliru, thus making the whole exercise curiously misleading and utterly unconscionable to warrant any serious recognition.
In all of these, so many conjectures, hearsays, deductions, impressions and lies were bandied in the said interview thus making the entire contents suspect. For example, his reference to the October 1st bombing in Abuja is totally at variance with what the State Security Service has unravelled about the masterminds of that dastardly incident. We are therefore at sea to reconcile any of the claims as truly reflective of any sound mind save that we have every reason to believe that this is purely a well-scripted interview to give our revered IBB a bad name. What the real motive of the interview is remains to us very worrisome because we cannot in any way rationalize the immediate or remote intentions of the interviewee and the interviewer.
