President-elect, Maj. Gen. Mohammadu Buhari(retd.), has read the riot act to his personal aides asking everyone to confine himself or herself to officially assigned roles.
Buhari said this in a statement on his behalf by Mallam Garba Shehu, the Director of Media and Publicity of the All Progressives Congress Presidential Campaign Council, in Abuja, on Wednesday.
The retired General directed that all matters relating to the dealings with the media should be left to his official media team.
According to the statement, the President-elect instructed all his staff, including the personnel attached directly to him, to steer clear of all dealings with the media.
Shehu said Buhari aligned himself with the pronouncement of his party, the APC, which had earlier expressed disagreement with the temporary barring of the African Independent Television from covering his media affairs.
Buhari was quoted as saying, “I would like everyone to henceforth stay within his or her defined area of responsibility.”
The president-elect added that his media team should be left to deal with their media colleagues as they best knew how.
The statement added that Buhari was neither consulted nor informed about the AIT’s barring, and only became aware of the matter after the public uproar it generated.
“The time of change has come,” he said, “and we must avoid making the same mistakes that the outgoing government made.”
This is even as the Peoples Democratic Party caucus in the House of Representatives expressed concern over the initial barring of AIT by Buhari’s team.
The Mulikat Akande-led caucus in a statement in Abuja on Wednesday, said it was deeply concerned about the far reaching implications of the action, especially in a democratic setting.
According to the caucus, the ban negates democratic ideals, including freedom of expression, and the holding of divergent opinions.
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