A participant in the Nigerian Army’s Operation Safe Corridor deradicalisation programme, Jimoh Safiu, has insisted that he was never a terrorist and that his detention was the result of a personal vendetta orchestrated by a powerful individual who viewed him as a romantic rival.
Speaking in an interview from 4:29 with Arise TV, Safiu said, “I have a girl called Kemi. She was a student of Futminna, and I was going out with her. I did not know that there was somebody else dating her, who had proposed to marry her. One day, we were relaxing at a Democracy Centre in Niger State. A strange Jeep pulled up, and the man inside was calling the girl, but she refused to pay attention to him. I chipped in and said, ‘Baby, why don’t you pay attention to this man who is calling your name?’ She said, ‘Never mind.'”
Safiu narrated further that the senior government official had accused him of instigating the girl against him and had promised to deal with him. “Three days later, I was with my wife in our room when I saw security officers burst into my house. They took me immediately from Niger State to Abuja, and then they started asking me about my connection with this girl. That was how i found myself in prison,” he lamented…Read_More…