Fayose is confused, he needs serious prayers - Presidency

The Presidency yesterday faulted an attempt by Ekiti State Governor Ayo Fayose to link President Muhammadu Buhari’s wife, Aisha, to United States (U.S.) Congressman William Jefferson’s bribery scandal.



Jefferson was convicted for the offence in 2009.

According to a statement by the Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Malam Garba Shehu, Fayose’s position was shameless and blatant distortion of facts.

He said the Presidency would ordinarily have ignored Fayose as he “is a man childishly obsessed with the desire to grab the headlines and insulting people at will because of his incurably boorish instincts”

But the Presidency, he said, decided to react on the issue in order not to allow Fayose mislead innocent Nigerians.

He added that ignoring the governor risked giving traction and credibility to outright and brazen falsehoods inconsistent with the status of anybody that calls himself a governor or leader.

The presidential aide explained that Mrs. Aisha Buhari had no direct, indirect or the remotest connection with William Jefferson’s corruption scandal in the U.S.

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, or if the Aisha of his idle imagination had any relationship by blood or any relationship in whatever form with Buhari’s wife.

He urged the governor to produce evidence from the records of investigation and subsequent trial of Jefferson to prove that the president’s wife was in anyway linked to that scandal.

The presidential aide asked Fayose to show proof when and where Mrs. Buhari was invited for interrogation in connection with the Congressman’s bribery scandal, let alone indicted for a crime locally or abroad.

Shehu explained that common names alone were not enough to automatically link innocent people to crimes or scandals, especially in an era of identity thieves.

He said free speech did not entitle Fayose to falsely accuse innocent people of crimes they knew nothing about.

He said Mrs. Buhari was entitled to protect her reputation from being recklessly maligned, stressing that political opposition was not a licence to attack people’s reputation brazenly without legal consequences.