ALI Modu Sheriff, former National Chairman of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP), who defected to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), has been announced as Chairman of President Muhammadu Buhari’s support committee for the 2019 elections.

The same Sheriff had been heavily linked, by officials of the same APC, with the formation of Boko Haram, the vicious terrorist group that has killed thousands of people and rendered millions homeless.

In a statement on Friday, Gideon Sammani, Senior Special Assistant to the President on Political Matters, said the objective of the Buhari support committee is “to build on the momentum of the success to step up preparation within the hierarchy and ranks and file of the party to fully support President Muhammadu Buhari to continue with his programmes and policies for the upliftment and advancement of the country with the manifesto of the APC”.

Made up of 35 members, 10-member National Advisory Committee and 5-member National Patrons, with Buhari as the Grand Patron, the Buhari support committee is different from the Buhari Campaign Organisation, which has Rotimi Amaechi, Minister of Transport as Director General and Festus Keyamo (SAN) as Director of Strategic Communications.

In 2016, Kaka Lawan, Borno State Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, unequivocally said that Sheriff was the creator of Boko Haram. At the time, Sheriff was leading a faction of the PDP.

Lawan made the allegation at the 56th Annual Conference of the Nigerian Bar Association, which was held in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital.

“Ali Modu Sheriff was a former governor of Borno State for eight years and left the state in a state of insecurity,” Lawan said.

“The issue that happened in Borno, the insecurity that brought us to this situation we are in, was as a result of bad governance, illiteracy, lack of respect for the rule of law, impunity in the administration of Ali Modu Sheriff and the Federal Government then did not checkmate his excesses and it escalated to this level.

“Up to today, he is moving freely and nobody is talking to him. All hands must be on deck, if actually justice must be done to the hundreds of people that were killed in the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

“He (Sheriff) should be arrested. He should be investigated. He should be interrogated for the facts that we have just mentioned in Port Harcourt here. His records were known to everybody, even to you media men.

“The federal government is aware; the state government is aware; you media men are aware. They are not only facts; they are notorious facts. All and sundry are aware.

“Can he deny that fact that he was a governor between 2003 and 2011? Can he deny that Muhammed Yusuf freely operated between 2003 and 2009 and the aberration laws he passed?” Lawan queried.

Sheriff denied the allegations at the time, saying that Lawan was merely acting out the scripts of his principal, Kashim Shettima, Governor of Borno State. Sheriff dared Lawan to present proofs of his allegation.

Taking up that challenge, Lawan wrote an article which was published by Premium Times as an opinion piece, in which he stated 40 facts to back his allegation that Sheriff indeed created Boko Haram.