Garba Shehu once urged Buhari to accept Boko Haram nomination – now denies it

Fresh evidence has emerged contradicting Garba Shehu’s recent claim that Boko Haram never nominated former President Muhammadu Buhari to negotiate with the federal government.

A 2012 article authored by Shehu himself and published by Premium Times shows that not only did he acknowledge the nomination at the time, he publicly advised Buhari to accept the role.

The revelation calls into question Shehu’s weekend rebuttal of ex-President Goodluck Jonathan, who had insisted that Boko Haram, during peace initiatives under his administration, picked Buhari as their preferred mediator.

Speaking at the presentation of Scars: Nigeria’s Journey and the Boko Haram Conundrum by ex-Chief of Defence Staff General Lucky Irabor, Jonathan recalled that Boko Haram leaders nominated Buhari in 2012. He said the development gave him hope that Buhari, once in power, could persuade the sect to surrender.

But in a strongly worded statement on Saturday, Shehu dismissed Jonathan’s remarks as “false,” insisting that Boko Haram always regarded Buhari as an enemy. He cited an assassination attempt on Buhari in Kaduna in 2014 as proof that the sect was hostile to him.

However, Shehu’s own words from November 14, 2012, tell a different story. Writing in an article titled “Not accepting to negotiate with Boko Haram could hurt Buhari,” the former presidential aide acknowledged the group’s nomination and described Buhari’s rejection of the role as a mistake.

“I respect General Buhari’s decision not to represent Boko Haram. That however does not make it the right decision on the matter. This unwise decision will return to hurt Buhari as leader and politician,” Shehu wrote at the time.

He went further, urging Buhari to see the nomination as a patriotic duty. “Based on this, the former military leader should have answered the call of patriotism and accepted this invitation,” Shehu argued. He even suggested that Buhari could have used the opportunity as bait to unmask those behind the sect’s atrocities.

The contradiction between Shehu’s 2012 article and his 2025 denial has sparked questions about attempts to rewrite history around Boko Haram and its interactions with Nigerian leaders. Analysts note that political narratives about the insurgency have often shifted depending on the interests at stake.

Jonathan, for his part, described the Chibok schoolgirls’ abduction of 2014 as a “permanent scar” on his presidency. He argued that Buhari’s subsequent failure to end the insurgency illustrated the complexity of the crisis and called for a carrot-and-stick strategy to tackle it.

But Shehu’s conflicting positions – first acknowledging and even encouraging Buhari to accept Boko Haram’s nomination, and now outrightly denying it, highlight how the Boko Haram saga has been reframed over time to suit political battles.