|
Alleged SSS Manhunt : I have not
gone underground-By
Bashir Yusuf Ibrahim
Newsdiaryonline Tue March 15,2011
My attention has been drawn to various newspaper reports that I
am being hounded by the Department of State Security for
allegedly participating in a meeting at which it was allegedly
claimed that an idea was mooted to poison President Goodluck
Jonathan. There were other reports which claimed that I have
gone underground in order to avoid arrest.
When I first read the report in The Nation newspaper of Friday,
March 8th, 2011
I decided to let it ride because I was not sure if the
paper had, somehow, obtained the information from the Department
of State Security ahead of me and did not, therefore, want to
rush to counter the report only to be picked up by the SSS later
in the day. Since then, I have waited for a call from the SSS
but, up until the time of issuing this statement, no such call
came through. While it is true that my colleagues, Bello
Abdulkadir and Farouk Bibi-Farouk have been invited and
questioned by the SSS on Wednesday, March 6th and Thursday,
March 7th respectively and subsequently released, I wish to
state unequivocally state that I have
neither received any invitation from the SSS nor gone
underground to avoid arrest. More importantly, neither Bello
Abdulkadir and Farouk Bibi-Farouk nor myself were party to any
meeting at which the poisoning of President Jonathan or anyone
for that matter was mooted. The insinuation that people like us
could be party to such a diabolical plot is, to say the least,
comical and absurd.
When the news of the arrest of Bello Abdulkadir came to my
attention, I placed several calls to his cellphone which, at
that material time was, as Bello himself told me after his
release, in the possession of SSS operatives. If the SSS was
interested in speaking with me, those operatives would have
answered the call and invited me or called me independently the
way they called him when they invited him for interrogation.
Alternatively, they could have dropped an invitation either at
my office or at my private residence and I would surely have
honoured it. When they called Farouk and invited him, he sent an
SMS to me informing me of his invitation and when he did not
return after a while, I issued a statement to the media
condemning the detention of my colleagues. All this while I
have, in the normal course of my business moved in and out of my
office and private residence in Abuja freely. I spoke to both
Bello and Farouk after their release. Both have mentioned to me
that my name never came up during the course of their
interrogation at the headquarters of the SSS.
I am concerned that a number of publications and commentators
have repeated the obviously inaccurate report that I am being
hounded by the SSS and have, therefore, gone underground to
avoid arrest. This morning, I have read one such report in my
friend, Sam Nda-Isaiah’s column online. I have received hundreds
of inquiries from friends and other concerned Nigerians who care
about my wellbeing. I wish to assure all and sundry that I am
currently on a business trip outside the country and will be
returning on Saturday, March 19th, 2011 by KLM at 8 PM. I’m not
being pursued by the SSS or anyone else and I have certainly not
gone underground.
Bashir
Yusuf Ibrahim,Secretary,Northern
Political Leaders' Forum,NPLF
Related story:NPLF:SSS arrests
another staff… it’s in bad faith-Forum
|
