Claim:\u00a0In an\u00a0interview\u00a0with BBC in London, the presidential candidate of the All Progressive Congress (APC), Bola Ahmed Tinubu created an impression that the Buhari-led administration had inherited seventeen local governments and about four states which were under the control of foreign Jihadists in 2015.<\/p>\n
Full-text:\u00a0Part of the\u00a0interview\u00a0where the claim was made reads: \u201cIt is actually reduced. I will defend him (Buhari) for that. Then, seventeen local governments and about four states where we had flags of foreign jihadists in Nigeria. That is no more. That is long gone. To start chaos is easy. To bring normalcy and redecorate is more difficult. Here we are, Buhari degraded, but not eliminated ISWAP\u2026[sic]\u201d<\/p>\n
Verification: Investigating the authenticity of the claim,\u00a0PRNigeria\u00a0noted that APC Presidential candidate, Asiwaju Tinubu might have relied on one of the several\u00a0remarks President Muhammadu Buhari\u00a0claiming that \u201call local governments taken by Boko Haram insurgents in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states have been recovered by the Nigerian troops under his (Buhari\u2019s) administration.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile,\u00a0PRNigeria\u00a0discovered that former President Goodluck Jonathan\u00a0repossessed\u00a014 LGAs that were controlled by Boko Haram terrorists then not ISWAP as mentioned by Tinubu in the interview.<\/p>\n
Checks further revealed that\u00a0Damboa\u00a0and\u00a0Gwoza\u00a0Local Government Areas were\u00a0reclaimed\u00a0among others between August 2014 and March 2015 by the Nigerian troops.<\/p>\n
PRNigeria\u00a0further discovered that Bama was reclaimed in\u00a0September\u00a02014 while Kukawa was liberated in\u00a0February\u00a02015.<\/p>\n
According to the then Director of Defence Information, Gen. Christ Olukolade, Monguno and Marte were also reclaimed in\u00a0February\u00a02015.<\/p>\n
Further\u00a0public information\u00a0indicates that the Goodluck Jonathan admiration liberated over 25 towns and communities that were previously occupied by terrorists.<\/p>\n
Some credible reports reveal that\u00a0foreign technical experts, including mercenaries,\u00a0assisted greatly in the recovery of the occupied territories in North-East during<\/p>\n
In fact,\u00a0Voice of America\u00a0(VOA) in April 2015, before the inauguration of Muhammadu Buhari as the 15th President of Nigeria, reported that \u201cAided by regional troops and foreign mercenaries, Nigeria\u2019s military has managed to take back nearly all of the towns and villages controlled by Boko Haram in Nigeria\u2019s northeast over the past few months.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut one area remains mostly under their control: Sambisa, a massive expanse of forest that spreads thousands of square kilometers\u201d<\/p>\n
Conclusion:\u00a0According to publicly available facts, scores of LGAs which had been under the control of Boko Haram were reclaimed by the Jonathan-led administration before President Buhari\u2019s assumption of office.<\/p>\n
PRNigeria, therefore, concludes that the claim by the APC Presidential candidate, Bola Tinubu that foreign Jihadists had hoisted flags in two states and seventeen LGAs could be true during the Jonathan administration.\u00a0 The same communities were also liberated during the previous administration. The impression that Buhari government liberated the towns is FALSE.<\/p>\n
By\u00a0PRNigeria<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Fact-check on Tinubu\u2019s BBC Interview: Did Foreign Jihadists Control 17 LGAs and 4 States Before Buhari\u2019s Presidency? Claim:\u00a0In an\u00a0interview\u00a0with BBC in London, the presidential candidate of the All Progressive Congress (APC), Bola Ahmed Tinubu created an impression that the Buhari-led administration had inherited seventeen local governments and about four states which were under the control […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":61243,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[1400,3360,56],"class_list":["post-61242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-control","tag-jihadists","tag-tinubu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61242\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}