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| Real or Fake? |
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| Real or Fake? |
President
Muhammadu Buhari has refuted claims by Ekiti governor, Mr. Ayo Fayose that his wife, and
first lady of Nigeria, Aisha Buhari was named in the bribery scandal involving former US lawmaker, William Jefferson who was convicted of corruption in
2009.
In a statement
by presidential spokesman on Tuesday, June 21, 2016, Mr. Garbu Shehu, Buhari
dismissed the allegation by Mr. Ayo Fayose as “laughable” and called it a
“desperate attempt” by Governor Ayo Fayose of Ekiti State to link his wife, to
the scandal which involved Nigeria’s former vice president, Atiku Abubakar.
The Ekiti
state governor on Monday, June 20, 2016 distributed a link to the US Department
of Justice’s website where court documents mentioning Aisha Buhari as one
who aided the transfer of bribers to Jefferson, an American lawmaker
who was convicted of corruption in 2009 and
is currently servicing hissentence in a US prison.
The president
arrogantly dismissed the allegation saying that “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”.
The statement
said that the presidency choose 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
the statement from the Nigerian presidency, Aisha Buhari had no direct,
indirect or the remotest connection with William Jefferson’s corruption scandal
in the United States.
Buhari
challenged Fayose to tell Nigerians if the so-called Aisha Buhari’s whose
pictures “he proudly, but ignorantly shared”, was the same Aisha Buhari married
to him, or if the Aisha Buhari of his idle imagination had any relationship by
blood or any relationship in whatever form, with his wife.
The statement
also asked Governor 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”.
Buhari also
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 presidential spokesperson, “free speech does not entitle Governor Fayose to
falsely accuse innocent people of crimes they knew nothing about”.
The statement
concluded with a threat to Governor Fayose, a vocal critic of the
president, saying that the president’s wife, Aisha Buhari is 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”.
Fayose Exposes Nigeria’s First Lady
Ekiti State
governor, Mr. Ayo Fayose is fighting back at President Muhammadu Buhari over
alleged plot by the federal government to “nail him by all means”. Monday,
the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, froze the governor’s personal account in Zenith Bank over an undisclosed
“investigation”.
After
announcing the freezing of his account on social media, Governor Fayose said
that President Muhammadu Buhari is corrupt. The governor went on to expose the
role that the president’s wife, Aisha Buhari, Nigeria’s first lady played in
the bribery scandal involving Williams Jefferson, a former US
lawmaker.
In a statement
signed by his chief press secretary, Idowu Adelusi, Fayose said President
Buhari was far from being a clean man.
“Even the
President cannot claim to be an angel,” the governor said, in reaction to the
freezing of his Zenith Bank account by the anti-graft commission.
“The estate he built in Abuja is
known to us. His wife was indicted over the Halliburton scandal.
“When that
American, Jefferson, was being sentenced, the president’s wife was mentioned as
having wired $170,000 to Jefferson. Her name was on page 25 of the sentencing
of Jefferson. We can serialize the judgment for people to see and read.”
The governor’s
special assistant on new media, Lere Olayinka, later circulated a link to and
copies of the court document detailing Mrs Aisha Buhari role in the bribery
case which is part of the infamous Halliburton bribery case.
The documents
showed that in some of the exhibits tendered in convicting Mr. Jefferson of
bribery, Mrs. Aisha Buhari was mentioned as transferring $170,000 to the American politician using a firm as proxy.
“Government
Exhibits 36-87 (6/26/02 $170,000 wire transfer from account in Nigeria in the
name of Aisha Buhari to an account in the name of The ANJ Group, LLC,
identifying “William Jefferson” as Beneficiary),” the US Government Sentencing
Memorandum said on page 22.
Aisha Buhari Named In Jefferson Bribery Scandal
Fayose’s
statement revives a scandal that involves several top Nigerians, including
former vice president, Mr. Atiku Abubakar.
Between 2000
and 2005, William Jefferson used his position as lawmaker in the US house
of representatives to sell influence private companies for cash. According
to court documents, Jefferson and members of his family received about
$367,500 through his firm, ANJ Group, for services rendered to iGate, an
American broadband technology provider.
An indigenous
firm, Netlink Digital Television, had signed a joint venture with iGate to set
up digital satellite TV and broadband Internet services in Nigeria. NDTV was
owned by Oyewole Fasawe, a Nigerian politician at the time. Mr. Jefferson
was contracted to help promote iGate and NDTV partnership in Nigeria.
Following a
lengthy trial, Mr. Jefferson was convicted in 2009 and sentenced to 13 years in
prison. Although Mr. Fasawe was arrested in 2005 by the EFCC, he was never
convicted.
Nigeria’s
former VP, Atiku Abubakar was marked as “a person of interest” in the case.
Both Aisha Buhari and the former vice president are reportedly “wanted” in the
United States. Curiously, Aisha Buhari has not visited the United States since
her husband became president.
An EFCC
report to then President Olusegun Obasanjo on June 22, 2006 on the bribery
case contained Mrs. Aisha Buhari’s Citizens Bank account statements and
implicated her for transferring funds to Mr. Jefferson.
A 2007 New
York Times’ article detailed
how Mrs. Aisha Buhari told an acquaintance in Washington that she was a
daughter of a former Nigerian head of state and a friend of Mr. Jefferson.
“As the pair
struck up a conversation and subsequently became friends, Mr. Assiba, then a
security guard, said she told him that her father was the former military ruler
of Nigeria, General Muhammadu Buhari, and that her American friends included
politicians like Mr. Jefferson of Louisiana.”
Read more at www.thetrentonline.com
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