Fresh revelation according to report gathered from a top-placed security source in the presidency suggests that President Buhari’s aborted trip to Ogoniland was as a result of the intervention of the US government intelligence report, News Punch has learned.
The US intelligence report had advised the president not to embark on the Ogoni trip, as such trip would have been bloody, New Telegraph reports
Though the militants had threatened to carry out their “threat to assassinate the president, if he had embarked on the trip,” Saturday Telegraph gathered that the reports from the U.S, which advised him against the proposed visit to Ogoniland, actually aborted the trip.
The NDA had threatened to attack Buhari, who was to flag off the cleaning of Ogoniland but changed his plans at the last minute by sending his deputy, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, to represent him at the event. When queried on the supposed superiority of the militants’ weapons to that of the president’s security apparatus, the source said, though Buhari might have escaped unhurt, there would still have been many casualties due to the exchange of firepower. “It was actually the US government that said we should not go there and we later realized that it was a good advice.
They made us to understand that from their intelligence report, those guys were going to act as planned. Even the DSS agreed with them that we should not go. When the matter was tabled, and we were confronted with evidences, we all realised that those guys were not joking at all. “It is not that they will over power the presidential guard, no, far from it, the security of any president is not a child’s play. It is just that those militants would have wanted to make a point and there would have been serious casualties.
When our correspondent probed further on the veracity of the claim, and sought to know how the intelligence report was relayed to Buhari, he simply said there were normal channels of communication between both countries. “There are ways the two countries share intelligence reports. The security people frequently exchange such reports and there is a way they go about it.
On our side, we know when they are telling the truth, this is one of such times. “You know there are times we don’t take them serious but when you see facts that are incontrovertible, it is better to heed than regret later,” he said.
Avengers give conditions for ceasefire Giving the Federal Government a condition to cease hostilities, the militants wrote: “we are calling on the international community, to come and support the restoration of our right to peaceful self-determination from this tragedy of 1914 that has expired since 2014."
“We want our resources back to restore the essence of human life in our region for generations to come because Nigeria has failed to do that. The world should not wait until we go the Sudan ways. Enough is enough.”
No comments