The Senior Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on Media and Publicity, Mallam Garba Shehu has declared that his principal knew there would be opposition to his decision to lead Nigeria into the Islamic Coalition against Terror, as he expected that resistance would come from people who are unable to see the bigger picture.
Shehu, who made this known in an interview with Daily Trust, justified the membership of the Saudi-led alliance on the native wisdom which posits that: “that your enemy’s enemy is your friend,” reasoning that whoever is fighting terror in Hide quoted text
the world should be Nigeria’s friend without Nigerians having to look at their background.
Speaking on the benefits of Nigeria’s membership of the coalition, he said, “They want to sit down with us and share intelligence, may be give us weapons to help fight terrorism and more than any other thing, to even help us rebuild the Northeast. If all of the budget that we have this year is pumped into the Northeast alone, it can’t repair all the schools that have been damaged, all the hospitals, the Churches, Mosques, markets, bridges and the roads. So you need international support to even feed the more than 2million people in IDP camps.
“For goodness sake those who criticize should go to Adamawa and Borno states and visit IDPs camps, I can bet you are going to find more Christian charity organizations supplying free food and donating tents to the victims who are Muslims. Those people are in need of help and will appreciate whoever will give them bread to put in their mouth. They need rice, water and shelter, and education for the children. And when such help comes they don’t ask whether you are a Muslim or Christian; they just need it.
“So people are just being petty in their thinking when they begin to introduce elements of religiosity into this matter. The President is looking well beyond that; he has a larger view of things and he thinks that all we need is peace in our country. Whether the Chibok girls are brought home by Christians or Muslims does not matter to the parents. All they want is, ‘Can I have my daughter back?’ That is the vision that the President has.
“We stand to gain knowledge and insight into what has largely come to be known as terrorism, coming from radicalized versions of Islam. We stand to gain intelligence, because these people are networking. Before we realized it Boko Haram was in alliance with the ISIS. They were the ones who said they were going into partnership with ISIS and the ISIS immediately responded by saying they welcome Boko Haram.
“Therefore, it has been internationalized and you cannot lock yourself up around Lake Chad and say you don’t want to listen to what is happening. Do you know that some of the arrests that had been made or the victims who had been shot and killed in this war, are not even black men? Where are they coming from? And the sophistication of their weapons, where is it coming from? If you don’t network in the international system you are unlikely to know where their resources are coming from. Jordan, as small as that country is, supplied tanks to Nigeria. So we expect support in terms of weaponry that will come.
“As I said, we need international support in order to rebuild damaged Nigeria… The United Arab Emirate (UAE) President, represented by the deputy commander-in-chief, immediately said they were dispatching the equivalent of their own Red Cross to come and assess how much damage has been done in order to assist in reconstruction. So it does not matter wherever help comes from.”
The presidential spokesman asserted that people who are thinking of Nigeria contributing troops to the coalition are going too far, stressing that no rationally-thinking individual would expect Nigeria to send troops to Syria and Iraq, since “We recalled our troops from Mali because we need them and our military is recruiting in order to fill the vacuum so that there would be enough men out there.”
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