Presidential spokesman, Mallam Garba Shehu, has expressed concerns over his safety following a challenge thrown at him by the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), asking him to travel across the North by roads without his security details.
The challenge followed Shehu’s public claim that Buhari, as Nigerian President, deserves credit for his efforts in tackling security issues in the country.
The rights group seemingly unconvinced by Garba's claims, said it is in possession of numerous pieces of evidence of incidents where innocent travellers were either slaughtered or maimed, insisting that the presidential aide lacks decorum and respect for the memories of those hapless and innocent citizens whose lives were deliberately taken away by different armed non-state actors.
It therefore requested that Garba confirms his claims that his boss had done much in combating insecurity by traveling across the North by roads without security.
The group later disclosed that Garba called to accept the challenge, but fears Buhari's enemies, especially those not happy with his achievements, may have made arrangements to attack him on his way in order to discredit him.
He therefore said unless HURIWA can guarantee that such plans are not in place, he's going nowhere.
“Garba Shehu had called us on the phone to accept the challenge on the condition that within 48 hours we should bring our lawyer so his lawyer sign agreements that something untoward won’t be orchestrated whilst he embarked on the journey in line with our challenge,” the group explained in a statement signed by its national coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko on Monday.
HURIWA noted that by accepting the challenge on conditions, Shehu had already contradicted himself, adding that all that he needed to do was to go ahead and travel to the aforementioned and show evidence that he actually did a road journey without security details.
“He has to do it with credible television stations who should also be brave enough to cover it since they reported him saying that security has improved,” HURIWA maintained.