Ex-heads of state, emirs plead for Nyako

Two former military heads of state led the embattled Adamawa State Governor Murtala Nyako to a meeting with President Goodluck Jonathan on Monday night in Abuja as part of the efforts to save Nyako, who is battling to escape impeachment by legislators in his state. The PUNCH learnt that the meeting was at the instance of the two ex-heads of state. A source close to the meeting confided in one of our...

correspondents that the two former dictators’ intervention rested on the fact that Nyako was a mutual friend. Nyako is a retired Vice-Admiral and one-time Chief of Naval Staff under ex-dictator Ibrahim Babangida. The source said, “The two military leaders took the governor to meet with the President last night. They, however, did not get a commitment because the President insisted that the governor should withdraw his contentious memo to the Northern Governors’ Forum and publicly apologise for his indiscretions. “The governor, who did not appear prepared to buckle, said he was prepared to leave office instead of taking any action which has the capacity to plunge the state into anarchy.”

Nyako had in April in a memo to the Northern Governors’ Forum alleged that there was a full-fledged genocide against the northern states and that the Federal Government was using the attack on Boko Haram to massively kill northerners. He also said that virtually all the soldiers of Northern Nigerian origin recently recruited to fight Boko Haram had been deceived in that aspect. He had said, ‘‘They are being poorly trained, totally ill-equipped, given only uniform and are killed by their trainers in Nigerian Army training centres as soon as they arrive in the Nigerian Army camps being used by the so-called Boko Haram insurgents. Virtually all the Nigerian Army soldiers killed/murdered in these operations so far are of Northern Nigeria origin.

“The Administration has also hired militia men from all across, especially North Africa, who have been deceived into accepting to come because they were made to believe that they would be fighting infidels.”

The ex-heads of state’s intervention also coincided with a similar effort by emirs from the eight emirates across Adamawa State under the leadership of the Lamido of Adamawa, Alhaji Mohammadu Musdafa. The emirs met in Yola, on Tuesday, as part of efforts to resolve the political impasse. Nyako on Tuesday refused to entertain questions from journalists over the impeachment process instituted against him by the Adamawa State House of Assembly. Nyako had set aside his ordeal to attend a meeting of the Council of State, presided over by Jonathan.

Culled from Punch