News have emerged about how a Boko Haram kingpin, Kabiru Umar Sokoto plotted to kidnap the children of the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential running mate, Kashim Shettima.
Sokoto had previously been arrested and convicted in January 2012 and was convicted the following year for masterminding the 2011 Christmas day car bomb attack on St. Theresa Catholic Church, Madalla, Niger which resulted in the death of about 40 people, scores injured as well as the destruction of many properties.
The terrorist was sent to life imprisonment by the Abuja federal high court in 2013 after finding him guilty of the charges read against him.
He was initially arrested at the Borno governor’s lodge in Asokoro, Abuja, on January 14, 2012, before he escaped from police custody and was re-arrested a month in Taraba state.
The confidential security memo dated Thursday, June 14, 2012, that is just coming to light, however, unveiled a daring plot by the terrorist which was halted.
The Cable quotes the document today, Friday, as revealing how Sokoto infiltrated the Borno governor’s lodge in a plot to kidnap Governor Shettima’s children.
The memo reportedly submitted to the presidency revealed that Shettima who had barely spent eight months as governor received a security warning that Boko Haram was plotting to kidnap his children for ransom.
The governor acted swiftly and relocated his children, two girls and a boy to Abuja and enrolled them at Turkish and British schools in Wuse II and Gwarimpa.
The memo signed by a senior security official alleged that Sokoto had then disguised as a “Borno man” to gain access to the lodge where Shettima’s children were staying.