Borno State Governor, Kashim Shettima,in a book titled, ‘Against the Run of Play,’ written by the Chairman, Editorial Board of ThisDay, Olusegun Adeniyi, lamented that Jonathan was not committed to the efforts to fight Boko Haram insurgency in the North-East.
Shettima said out of the 13 meetings he had with Jonathan on the Boko Haram terrorism, only one was initiated by the latter.
“All the others were at my seeking appointments to see him and on some occasions, it took several weeks for such requests to be granted. There was a belief around President Jonathan that the whole Boko Haram crisis was orchestrated to undermine him and his administration and because of that, there was no interest in resolving the problem,” he added.
The governor alleged that Jonathan ‘marked’ him for pushing for the meetings and allegedly planned to remove him and the two other governors in the North-East.
Shettima said, “He particularly wanted to remove me….I heard that his Attorney-General and Justice Minister, Mr. Mohammed Adoke, said there was nowhere in the constitution where the President had the power to remove a governor. In fact, I was told that President Jonathan reportedly interjected by asking, ‘How come President Obasanjo removed Governor Joshua Dariye?’ to which he was reminded that the Dariye aberration had been declared illegal by the Supreme Court.”