Bribery scandal allegation against Aisha Buhari: Fayose hopelessly confused, needs prayers — Presidency
Reacting to Fayose’s allegations in a press statement, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Malam 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.”
Malam 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 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.
According to Shehu, 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 are 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 Presidential Media Aide, free speech does not entitle Governor Fayose to falsely accuse innocent people of crimes they knew nothing about.
He warned Fayose that 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.
It would be recalled that the Ekiti State governor had, Monday, released a document casting shades on wife of the president, Mrs Aisha Buhari’s, which allegedly implicated her in the messy bribery scandal involving Williams Jefferson, a United States Congressman.
Fayose, whose bank account was reportedly frozen on the orders of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Monday, said the document showed the involvement of the President’s wife in the bribery scandal which has the conviction of top American lawmaker.
The Ekiti state governor distributed a link to the US Department of Justice’s website holding court documents where Aisha Buhari was alleged to have transferred suspicious funds to a convicted former American congressman, Williams Jefferson.
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 Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.
“The estate he built in Abuja is known to us. His wife was indicted over the Halliburton Scandal (sic). 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 links to and copies of the court document detailing Mrs Buhari’s mention in the scandal.
The documents showed that in some of the exhibits tendered in convicting Mr. Jefferson of bribery, Mrs. 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 could not be reached for comments. And Presidential spokesman, Femi Adesina, declined comments, saying he would need to check the documents himself before issuing an official statement.
Fayose’s comment sparked a recollection of how Mr Jefferson, between 2000 and 2005, used his position as member of the U.S. House of Representatives to offer illegal services to private companies for cash rewards.
Premium Times reports that Jefferson and his family, according to United States authorities, received about $367,500 through 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 the country. NDTV was owned by Oyewole Fasawe, a PDP chieftain 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.
Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar were also said to be a person of interest in the allegations.
A final report released by the EFCC on June 22, 2006 about the bribery scandal also contained Mrs. Buhari’s Citizens Bank account statements and how she transferred funds to Mr. Jefferson.
A 2007 New York Times’ article detailed how Mrs. 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, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, and that her American friends included politicians like Mr. Jefferson of Louisiana.”
