CONGRATULATING THE NEW POLICE CHIEF
Challenges Ekiti gov to produce proof linking Aisha Buhari to jailed US congressman
The presidency has dismissed as laughable the desperate attempt by the Ekiti State Governor Ayo Fayose to link President Muhammadu Buhari's wife Aisha to United States Congressman William Jefferson’s bribery scandal for which the American lawmaker was convicted in 2009.
Reacting to Fayose’s allegations in a statement he issued in Abuja yesterday, the president’s media aide, Mr. Garba Shehu, said 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”.
Shehu said however 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.
According to him, 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.
Shehu explained that Aisha had no direct, indirect or the remotest connection with William Jefferson's corruption scandal in the US.
He challenged Fayose to tell Nigerians if the so-called Aisha whose pictures he proudly, but ignorantly shared, was the same Aisha married to the president, 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, Aisha 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 further challenged Fayose to show proof when and where Aisha Buhari was invited for interrogation in connection with Jefferson’s bribery scandal, let alone indicted for a crime either locally or abroad.
Shehu said that free speech did not entitled Fayose to falsely accuse innocent people of crimes they knew nothing about.
He warned Fayose 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.
According to online news medium, The Will, further checks have revealed that the Aisha Buhari bandied by Fayose has no links whatsoever with the president.
A 2007 report by the NYTIMES on the matter clearly showed that the Ms Buhari linked to the Halliburton scandal is neither the president’s wife nor daughter.
According to the report, “Ms. Buhari” claimed to be working for Victor Attah, a former Governor of Akwa Ibom State, who had asked her to look for consultants and lawyers who could help him pressure oil companies like ExxonMobil to clean up pollution in the Nigerian state.
She met a Mr. Assiba, who was scouting investors for his own African projects and had been introduced earlier to Richard T. Hines. The lobbyist, Mr. Assiba told Ms. Buhari, was just the man Mr. Attah needed.
Attah and Mr. Hines came to terms and the Nigerian official agreed in the late summer of 2005 to pay him $1.2 million for a year’s work.
According to the contract and lobbying records, Mr. Hines’s duties included meetings with government officials in Washington seeking aid for Akwa Ibom, finding companies and investors to come to the Nigerian state, and publicising its economic opportunities.
“Despite the large amount of money that Mr. Attah paid Mr. Hines, the politician said he never looked into the backgrounds of either the lobbyist or the associates who followed Mr. Hines to Nigeria.
“If he had, he might have found that some of those associates had interesting backgrounds. In fact, a few of them had already been in Africa the year before — to seek work from another client of Mr. Hines, the government of the nearby nation of Gambia,” the report stated.
“As for Ms. Buhari, who is living in Virginia, it’s not clear who she really is. For one, she is under investigation in Nigeria by its Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, said its head, Nuhu Ribadu.
“Ribadu said he is uncertain if her name is Aisha Buhari, but he added that she is not a daughter of General Buhari,” it said, adding that American authorities suspect that Ms. Buhari may have served as a financial conduit for the politician.
“Mr. Jefferson also testified before a grand jury investigating the congressman, who is suspected of soliciting bribes from American companies seeking business in Nigeria.”
Even the president had denied knowing or having a relationship with her.
“I don’t have any relationship with that Aisha Buhari,” President Buhari said. “I don’t have any daughter called Aisha Buhari living outside this country. She is not my daughter.”