By Kevwe Ebireri

Former military head of state, Muhammadu Buhari, has asked the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, to retract its accusation linking him with the Boko Haram terrorist acts and tender an unreserved public apology to him within seven days or face a legal action.

Buhari, a retired army general and a chieftain of the opposition All Progressive Congress, APC, said the allegations made against him by the national publicity secretary of the PDP, Olisa Metuh, saying that he ordered his supporters to embark on a killing spree if he should lose the 2011 presidential elections, are unfounded and completely false.

He said “it is public knowledge that Boko Haram as a terror organization long preceded the 2011 presidential elections. My utterances or lack of them on the 2011 presidential election could not therefore have created nor sustained the Boko Haram insurgency”.

The former military leader, who has contested the presidential elections thrice and lost, also said that apart from his days in the army, he has never been associated with any form of violence and has continued to play politics by the rules, while remaining a law abiding citizen.

He noted that 2011 was not the first time he would be defeated at the polls, emphasizing that it was indeed his third conquest; and that if he did not call for violence in the first two occasions, he had no reason to do so in 2011, “and I did not” he said.

The APC chieftain also stated that following the spark of violence after the 2011 election, the PDP government led by President Goodluck Jonathan constituted the Sheikh Ahmed Lemu Panel of Inquiry to investigate and report its immediate and remote causes and that nowhere in its report did the panel refer to him or his comments as being the cause of the violence.

“The panel discharged its duties within its terms of reference and submitted its report to the President. This report was accepted by government and a Whitepaper issued. Nowhere in that report, a product of thorough investigation of that unfortunate incident, was I mentioned in the remotest way to have uttered a word or acted in any form or manner that sparked off the violence. If I had, certainly that investigation would have uncovered it,” he said.

Buhari said the allegation is only aimed at tarnishing his image and reputation in the hope of destroying his political and electoral standing, and that of his party, the APC, adding that he cannot sit back and allow his image and that of my political party to be smeared by falsehood in the name of politics.

”It is therefore a grave infraction to my person, personality and integrity that such a false and malicious accusation is being levelled against me by the PDP. This is dangerous politics by the ruling party and it must stop forthwith,” he warned.