The country received quite a shocking response coming from the wife of the president of Nigeria and social is buzzing about it as we speak.
The Presidency had initially dismissed as “laughable’’ the attempt by Gov. Ayo Fayose of Ekiti to link President Buhari’s wife, Aisha, to US Congressman William Jefferson’s bribery scandal for which the American lawmaker was convicted in 2009.
Mallam Garba Shehu, Senior Special Assistant (SSA) to the President on Media and Publicity, said this in a statement issued in Abuja on Tuesday.
He said that ordinarily the presidency would have ignored Fayose because “he is a man childishly obsessed with the desire to grab the headlines and insulting people at will because of his incurably boorish instincts.’’
He said that the presidency chose to respond on this occasion for the sake of innocent Nigerians who might be misled by Fayose’s “shameless and blatant distortion of facts.’’
Shehu said, “Ignoring Fayose carries the risk of giving traction and credibility to outright and brazen falsehoods inconsistent with the status of anybody that calls himself a governor or leader.’’
The SSA explained that Aisha had no direct, indirect or the remotest connection with William Jefferson’s corruption scandal in the United States.
He challenged Fayose to tell Nigerians “if the so-called Aisha whose pictures he proudly, but ignorantly shared, was the same Aisha married to President Muhammadu Buhari.’’
He also challenged Fayose to tell Nigerians “if the Aisha of his idle imagination had any relationship by blood or any relationship in whatever form with the President Buhari’s wife.’’
Shehu further challenged Fayose to produce evidence from the records of investigation and subsequent trial of Jefferson to prove that Buhari’s wife was in anyway linked to the scandal.
He said, “common names alone are not enough to automatically link innocent people to crimes or scandals, especially in an era of identity thieves.’’
The SSA called on Fayose to show proof when and where Aisha Buhari was invited for interrogation in connection with William Jefferson’s bribery scandal, let alone indicted for a crime locally or abroad.
He said that free speech does not entitle Fayose to falsely accuse innocent people of crimes they knew nothing about.
He warned that Aisha Buhari was entitled to protect her reputation from being recklessly maligned, adding that “political opposition is not a licence to attack people’s reputation brazenly without legal consequences.’’
Ibrahim Lamorde, a former chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes and Commission, also came out to say that the Aisha Buhari named in the bribery scandal involving a U.S. Congressman, Williams Jefferson, is not Aisha, President Muhammadu Buhari’s wife.
According to Premium Times, Mr. Lamorde said when contacted on Tuesday morning that, “I can tell you authoritatively that the Aisha Buhari named in that case is not President Buhari’s wife. It is another Aisha Buhari entirely.”
“I was the director of operations at the EFCC at the time so I know about the case very well. I can tell you that it is not her (President Buhari’s wife). That much we established.”
Mr. Lamorde was EFCC chairman until he was removed in December 2015 by President Buhari.
Despite all these, a tweet which has now been deleted, came from the verified Twitter account if Mrs Buhari, saying that "Fayose is an unchained mad dog"
That was quite a lot, to be honest. Most people are of the opinion that she should have ignored like President Buhari has been ignoring Fayose since he got into power.
Take it easy First Lady, please!
No comments:
Post a Comment