The Presidency has described the allegation by the Ekiti State Governor, Ayo Fayose, linking President Muhammadu Buhari’s wife, Aisha, to the United States Congressman William Jefferson’s bribery scandal, as laughable.
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.
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