The Presidency has lashed out at Ekiti state governor, Ayo Fayose over his attempt to link President Buhari’s wife, Aisha, to US Congressman William Jefferson’s bribery scandal for which he was convicted in 2009.
In a statement by the President’s Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, the Presidency said ordinarily it would have ignored Fayose because he was a man “childishly obsessed with the desire to grab the headlines and insulting people at will because of his incurably boorish instincts.” Garba explained 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.
“ He said ignoring Fayose carried 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. According to the statement, 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 President Muhammadu Buhari, or if the Aisha of his idle imagination had any relationship by blood or any relationship in whatever form with President 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 thieves. He further challenged Fayose to show proof when and where Aisha Buhari was invited for interrogation in connection with Congressman William Jefferson’s bribery scandal, let alone indicted for a crime locally or abroad. According to the Shehu, free speech does not entitle Governor 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 was not a licence to attack people’s reputation brazenly without legal consequences.
