Former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Dr Obadiah Mailafia, says some local interests who wanted former President Goodluck Jonathan out of power in 2015 sponsored bandits to make the country ungovernable for him.
Mailafia said this during an interview with a local media outfit.
Mailafia had accused a serving Northern governor of being a top commander of the Boko Haram insurgents in Northeast Nigeria. A statement he later denied after several questioning by the Department of State Services (DSS).
He said: “During the 2015 elections they brought in thousands of foreigners into this country, armed them because it was a case of if Goodluck Jonathan doesn’t surrender, there will be war. They were ready for civil war; they were not ready for peace.”
“Of course, Jonathan handed over to them and then they turned their backs on the hoodlums and the hoodlums said ‘look, you brought us here and we are still here.”
Mailafia said foreign powers were also behind the banditry in the country.
He said: “There are certain world powers that want to destroy our country. That is what I believe. There was a container load of weapons that were brought in from Turkey.
“Another time some were brought in from Iran. But nobody probed further and everything was swept under the carpet and that was the end of it,” he said.
He disagreed with the approach of the Kaduna-based Islamic scholar, Sheikh Ahmad Gumi, on the issue of amnesty for bandits, saying it was wrong to offer amnesty to criminals, but no provision for the victims.
