The
Presidency on Tuesday described the allegation by the Ekiti State Governor, Mr.
Ayo Fayose, linking President Muhammadu Buhari’s wife, Aisha, to the United
States Congressman William Jefferson’s bribery scandal, as laughable.
Based
on the scandal, Jefferson was convicted in 2009.
The
Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Mallam Garba
Shehu, in a statement, described the governor as a man “childishly obsessed
with the desire to grab the headlines and insulting people at will because of
his incurably boorish instincts.”
Shehu
said the Presidency chose to respond to Fayose for the sake of innocent
Nigerians who might be misled by his “shameless and blatant distortion of
facts.”
He
said ignoring Fayose carried the risk of giving traction and credibility to
outright and brazen falsehood inconsistent with the status of anybody that
called himself a governor or leader.
The
presidential spokesman said 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 Buhari, or if the
Aisha of his “idle imagination” had any relationship by blood or any
relationship in whatever form, with Buhari’s wife.
Shehu
also 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 that scandal.
He
explained that common names alone were not enough to automatically link
innocent people to crimes or scandals, especially in an era of identity theft.
He
asked Fayose to show proof when and where Aisha Buhari was invited for
interrogation in connection with the Jefferson’s bribery scandal, let alone
indicted for a crime locally or abroad.
Shehu
added that free speech did not entitle Fayose to falsely accuse innocent people
of crimes they knew nothing about.
He
warned the governor that Aisha Buhari was entitled to protect her reputation
from being recklessly maligned, adding that political opposition was not a
licence to attack people’s reputation brazenly without legal consequences.
Meanwhile the wife of the President has taken to her twitter page to lambast Governor Ayo Fayose whom she described as AN UNCHAINED MAD DOG
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Politics