Former aide to ex-President Goodluck Jonathan, Reno Omokri has described the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari as an anti-Christ regime for accusing Leah Sharibu’s mother, Rubecca Sharibu of lying.
In a statement yesterday, he said he was devastated that the Nigerian government stooped so low to discredit the speech made by Rubecca in the United States recently.
Rubecca had on June 11, at the Heritage Foundation in the US, testified that both her and Leah were victims of religious persecution and that she had not heard from the Nigerian government for months about efforts to rescue her daughter after President Buhari promised to do his best to secure her release.
Omokri said, “Rubecca’s statements are that of facts, which are very obvious and the denial by the Buhari junta of this truth casts suspicion on the genuineness of their efforts to free Leah Sharibu and bring her abductors to justice.
“Let us examine Rubecca’s claims. One, she said that both her family and her daughter are victims of religious persecution. Is that a lie?
“The only reason why Boko Haram released 104 other girls and kept Leah Sharibu back is that she refused to deny her faith in Jesus Christ and accept Islam. Is that not a textbook definition of religious persecution?” he queried.
He said secondly, Nigerians have seen how slow the Buhari government has been to assisting Leah’s family, adding that this was in sharp contrast to the case involving Zainab Aliyu, a Muslim girl who was caught with tramadol in Saudi Arabia.
Omokri said the usually slow Buhari became a superhero and personally engaged in diplomacy with his Saudi counterparts until Zainab was released.
“The fact is that Buhari has failed to show this same urgency in the case of Leah Sharibu, despite the fact that his government once publicly boasted of having back channels to Boko Haram.
“On the second claim that she had not heard from the Buhari administration on the release of her daughter for months, this is a self-evident fact.
“Buhari read in the papers and saw on video that I, Reno Omokri, placed a call to Rubecca Sharibu on September 6, 2018 while protesting to mark the 200th day anniversary of Leah Sharibu’s abduction, in front of the Nigerian High Commission in London. He saw an opportunity to politic and in a copycat move, he copied my gesture on October 3, 2018 and called Rubecca Sharibu.”
He said since that day, neither President Buhari nor his government or privies have been in touch with Rubecca to brief her on efforts, if any, to rescue her daughter.
He said it was clear who was the liar between the Buhari administration and the Sharibu family.
Omokri said: “I am personally aware that the Buhari administration is hell-bent on criminalising anyone fighting for Leah Sharibu’s release.
“The Buhari government has done this to me. They paid agents to spread lies that I have been collecting grants from foreign agencies, governments and churches to fund my #FreeLeahSharibu campaign. I had to take out an advertorial calling on anyone who had given me even a penny because of the campaign to speak out. Every penny I have spent crisscrossing the world for my #FreeLeahSharibu campaign has come from my own pockets.
“I wrote a book on Leah Sharibu and I made a royalty of a million Naira. The money stayed in my account for only five minutes before it was transferred to Leah Sharibu’s mother. The transfer was monitored and confirmed by the Christian Association of Nigeria, on my invitation. I made cloths bearing the image of my #FreeLeahSharibu movement and the sales went directly to her father, Nathan Irmiya Sharibu’s account.”
He said he was therefore calling on the world to note that rather than prosecute members of Boko Haram, the group which abducted Leah Sharibu, the Buhari government has freed over a thousand Boko Haram members captured by the previous administration of Jonathan, on the pretext that they were repentant.
He said one of such released Boko Haram members went on to rejoin the terror group and lead an attack that killed personnel of the United Nations.
“Currently, the Buhari administration is rewarding herdsmen, who have killed tens of thousands of Nigerians by building them so-called Ruga settlements nationwide at government expense.
“The Buhari administration has shown itself to be a biased government under which it is becoming increasingly difficult to profess and live our life as a genuine follower of Christ,” he said.
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