[dropcap]I[/dropcap] am absolutely devastated today that the Nigerian government of General Muhammadu Buhari would stoop so low to release a statement accusing Leah Sharibu’s mother, Rebecca Sharibu, of being a liar, following her truthful testimony in the United States, at the Heritage Foundation on June 11, 2018, , where she testified that both her and her daughter are victims of “religious persecution” and that she had not heard from the Nigerian government for months about efforts to rescue her daughter, after President Muhammadu Buhari promised to do his best to secure her release.
The above statements are statements of fact 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?
Secondly, we see how slow the Buhari regime has been to assist Leah’s family. This is in sharp contrast to the case involving Zainab Aliyu, a Muslim girl who was caught with tramadol in Saudi Arabia. The usually slow General Muhammadu Buhari became a superhero and personally engaged in diplomacy with his Saudi counterparts until Zainab was released.
The fact is that Muhammadu 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” (their exact words) 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.
General 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 copy cat move, he copied my gesture on October 3, 2018 and called Rubecca Sharibu.
Since that day, neither General Muhammadu Buhari nor his government or privies have been in touch with Rubecca to brief her on efforts, if any, to rescue her daughter.
From the above facts, it should be clear who is the liar between the Buhari administration and the Sharibu family.
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 my #FreeLeahSharibu 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 5 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.
Yet, despite this unprecedented transparency that their principal, General Buhari, cannot show, (he refuses to publish his assets declaration form as he promised), this government unsuccessfully tried to tarnish my image.
If they can do it to me, should anybody be surprised when they try to do it to Rubecca. Buhari’s Administration is decidedly anti-Christian.
I call on the world to note that rather than prosecute members of Boko Haram, the group which abducted Leah Sharibu, the Buhari regime has freed over a thousand Boko Haram members captured by the previous administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan, on the pretext that they were repentant.
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.
Reno Omokri is a former media aide to former President Goodluck Jonathan. He is also the founder of the Mind of Christ Christian Center in California, author of Shunpiking: No Shortcuts to God and Why Jesus Wept. He tweets from @RenoOmokri.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author
