Finally, Mailafia apologises for lying

Obadiah Mailafia, a former deputy governor of the CBN who currently holds an office in the Nigeria Institute of Policy and Strategy Studies, Kuru, Jos, is all thumbs now as he struggles to save his face from disgrace.

He made a claim during the week, on a popular radio station in Abuja where he fingered a northern governor and President Muhammadu Buhari as part and parcel of Boko Haram and banditry in Nigeria.

Mailafia made more claims about terrorists wiping off rural Nigerians and starting a civil war in 2022. And he added he got his intel from his own security network and former Boko Haram terrorists.

It turns out it’s all a lie—despite swearing he was ready to die in defending his statements.

In an interview with BBC Hausa on Thursday, Mailafia, a failed presidential candidate in the 2019 election, revealed he got the information from “some Fulani traders” in the market, adding he never knew his comments would go viral.

It took Mailafia a number of denials before he owned up to his fake news and conspiracy theories.

The DSS office in Jos invited him for interrogation on Thursday. While he told the agents different stories during the investigation, he came out gain to address a crowd of journalists and rights activists to say something else.

“It is even more condemnable that Mailafiya, who had profusely apologized during his visit to the Service’s Plateau State Command for his ignoble statement, would, afterwards, announce to the world that he stood by his misguided eruption,” an official statement from the DSS said Friday morning.

And by Thursday evening, on the BC Hausa service, Mailafia again did a second-guessing. He said he explained to the DSS what he knew about the incident and apologised for any statements he made that offended others.

He added that he’s a fan of Buhari’s.

This recanting wouldn’t go down well with media activists and lawyers, including the Media Rights Agenda, SAN Femi Falana, the PDP, and other who had risen up in defence of Mailafia when the DSS invited him, and when a N5-million hate-speech fie was slammed on the radio station.