MURIC Gives Okupe Knocks For Blaming Jonathan’s Defeat On Chibok Girls’ Abduction

MURICThe Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC), has lampooned the Senior Special Assistant to President Goodluck Jonathan on Public Affairs, Dr. Doyin Okupe, for attributing the defeat of his principal in the March 28 elections to his failure to rescue the Chibok girls.

Okupe had last week attempted to link the president’s failed re-election bid to an international conspiracy and abduction of over 200 female students of Government Secondary School, Chibok, in Borno State, claiming the incident was orchestrated to portray the administration as incompetent.

In its reaction, MURIC, through its Executive Director, Prof. Ishaq Akintola, in a statement on Monday, said that it was unfortunate for Okupe to be playing on the intelligence of Nigerians by saying that the girls abducted over a year ago by the Boko Haram insurgents was staged in order to paint a bad image of President Jonathan’s administration.

“While we appreciate President Jonathan’s timely act of conceding defeat in the presidential election, we hasten to assert that this single act alone is not enough to obliterate his litany of abnormalities in governance. Doyin Okupe’s attempt at praise-singing his employer has only succeeded in jogging our memory. Nigerians cannot forget so quickly”, Akintola said.

While listing some of the sins of the president, which came to haunt him at the polls, the MURIC boss pointed out that Mr. Jonathan paid the price for allowing his wife to usurp his executive powers apart from the continual threats by his Ijaw kinsmen among others.

He added that even a state governor was forced to drive himself from Kano to the South because his aircraft was not allowed to take off with security agencies used to subvert legitimate exercises embarked upon by the opposition while they openly supported illegal acts of members of the ruling party including the Buhari “certificategate”, which rather discredited the army.

Mr. Akintola, therefore, urged the incoming administration to learn from the mistakes of the Jonathan administration and that President-elect Muhammadu Buhari must rise above religious persecution and clannishness by carrying along all religious and ethnic segments of the country.