Shettima explains why he was waiting for Jonathan’s call instead of reaching him first

Governor Kashim Shettima of Borno state gives reasons why he did not reach the-then president Goodluck Jonathan after Boko Haram abducted 276 school girls from their school in Chibok..


– The governor says he knew that security agencies must have briefed the president of the development on the exact day it happened, April 14-15, 2014

– Shettima insists that the government girls' secondary school (GGSS) in Chibok town was considered as safe...

Governor Shettima has recently said that it took Goodluck Jonathan 19 days to call him over the abduction of Chibok girls back in April 2014. The governor made the declaration during a meeting with the former president Olusegun Obasanjo in the capital of Borno state, Maiduguri.

However, the logical question emerged: why would a top official wait for the call, instead of contacting the president first?

Governor Kashim Shettima (right) believes Chief Olusegun Obasanjo would have rescued the girls if he was still Nigeria's president.
PremiumTimes received an answer to the inquiry on Saturday, April 2. The reply was provided by Isa Gusau, a special adviser on communication to the Borno state governor.


Read the abstracts below:
President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan was well briefed by security agencies soon after the abduction and this is to be expected given the magnitude and for the fact that as at that time, Borno was under a state of emergency as declared by the president, which made him directly in charge of security issues in Borno and happenings there.

So, ‎when the Chibok abduction took place on April 14, 2014, Governor Kashim Shettima, who is the chairman of the State Security Councils, remained within Borno state as he was expected to do, to build public confidence and presided over series of daily security council meetings held at the Government House in Maiduguri to analyze the situation and developments, to identify strategies and to coordinate deployment of security responses to containing the emergency.

The practice in Nigeria is that when emergency security situations happen in any of the 36 states, the president does not rely on governors for security briefings, he relies on daily situation report and also he invites service chiefs and heads of key intelligence establishments like the Department of State Security Services and the National Intelligence Agency as well, for information that may include what a governor may not even be in position to know because there are certain classified information that only the president is told even when they affect a particular state whose governor is kept in the dark.

After a security meeting on April 16, 2014, Governor Kashim Shettima had addressed the press same day, (April 16, 2014) which was two days after the Chibok incident during which he announced a N50 million reward on information that could lead to freeing the schoolgirls and this was widely reported by the media within and outside Nigeria. So, there was general public knowledge about the incident not to talk of the president knowing about it.

The governor simply concentrated on working with security agencies, the civilian JTF, hunters and local community leaders in Chibok on finding ways of freeing the schoolgirls. Till date, only Governor Kashim Shettima and his wife visited Chibok after that incident, nobody went from the federal level to meet the parents throughout the Jonathan era.

As concerns the general security situation in Chibok community before the mass abduction, the governor's reply read in part:
"Truth is that Chibok was one of the places that had no known security threats as at the time the abduction took place. Chibok had virtually no record of attacks before that incident.

"If GGSS Chibok was marked as unsafe, the WAEC would not have sent their officials there to conduct the exams neither would parents have lived in Chibok. Everyone would have fled. We all know that WAEC had officials conducting exams in Chibok while residents did not flee the communities.

We have reasons to believe that the Boko Haram targeted Chibok because it was one of the places they were not expected to attack given records of their presence and attacks across Borno state."

However, the governor of Borno acknowledged that a security alert did go out prior to the incident, but quickly added that it was ambiguous.