Former President Goodluck Jonathan has disclosed that Boko Haram insurgents once nominated his successor, Muhammadu Buhari, to represent them in peace talks with the Federal Government.
Jonathan, who spoke in Abuja on Friday at the public presentation of Scars, a book authored by former Chief of Defence Staff, Gen. Lucky Irabor (retd.), said his administration had set up several committees to explore dialogue with the sect.
He explained that in one such instance, Boko Haram listed Buhari as their preferred negotiator.
“One of the committees we set up then, the Boko Haram nominated Buhari to lead their team to negotiate with the government.
So I was feeling that if they nominated Buhari, when he took over as president, it could have been easy to negotiate with them and they would have handed over their guns. But it was still there till today,” Jonathan said.
The former president said the persistence of the insurgency under Buhari’s tenure showed that the conflict was more complex than often portrayed.
He described the abduction of over 200 Chibok schoolgirls in 2014 as a permanent scar on his administration, noting that the Boko Haram crisis was driven by more than poverty or hunger.
“If you look at the weapons they use, and you value them, then you know these are not hungry people. Sometimes, they even have more ammunition than our soldiers. That suggests external involvement,” he said.
Jonathan urged the current administration to adopt a carrot-and-stick approach, while encouraging military officers who fought the sect to document their experiences.
He also expressed hope that someday, leaders of Boko Haram would write their own accounts, “similar to how actors in the Nigerian Civil War documented their stories,” to shed light on the group’s true motives.
Boko Haram, founded in the early 2000s in Borno State, became a major security threat after its leader, Mohammed Yusuf, was killed in police custody in 2009.
At the height of its violence in 2012, reports surfaced that the sect named Buhari among northern leaders it trusted to mediate.
Buhari at the time rejected the offer, accusing Jonathan’s government of trying to drag him into the insurgency for political reasons.
