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Buhari Responds To Fayose’s Allegation Against Aisha Buhari With Insults

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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 serving his sentence 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 Timesarticle 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.”

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