A large crowd of Borno residents, on Wednesday, booed the President, Muhammadu Buhari , as his convoy drove from the Maiduguri International Airport to the centre of the city.
Buhari, upon returning from a five-day trip to Ethiopia for an African Union summit, paid a condolence visit to the North-Eastern state, following a Boko Haram attack on Sunday.
As his convoy moved to the city at 1:30pm, he was booed by residents, who lined up along the airport road.
At the airport, the President did not shake hands with some traditional rulers, who came to welcome him.
During previous visits to Borno State, Buhari received a warm reception from residents of the state, which is regarded as one of his strongholds.
In the last presidential election, Buhari had his widest margin of victory in Borno State, where he polled 836,496 votes out of 955,205 votes that were cast, which constitutes a margin of over 85 per cent.
His closest rival, Atiku Abubakar, of the Peoples Democratic Party scored 71,788 votes.
On Wednesday, the people, who were dissatisfied with the upsurge in Boko Haram attacks in the state, lined up along the airport road and shouted in Hausa Bama so! Bamayi!, meaning “We don’t want,” “we’re not interested.”
There have been sustained attacks by insurgents on roads leading to Maiduguri in recent times. On Sunday, no fewer than 30 travellers, including children and women, were burnt to death by insurgents, who invaded Auno, 20 kilometres to Maiduguri.
Two weeks ago, two persons were slaughtered by Boko Haram and their frozen fish carted away. The victims slept in a truck because they could not meet the 5pm deadline when the military usually shut the Maiduguri gate.
_____
Follow us on Twitter at @thesignalng
Copyright 2020 SIGNAL. Permission to use portions of this article is granted provided appropriate credits are given to www.signalng.com and other relevant source.
