The Presidency on Tuesday dismissed as laughable what it observed as the desperate attempt by Governor Ayo Fayose of Ekiti State to link President Buhari's wife, Aisha, to United States Congressman William Jefferson's bribery scandal for which the American lawmaker was convicted in 2009.
According to a statement issued by the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Malam Garba Shehu, in Abuja, on Tuesday, 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."
It explained 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."
The statement 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."
The statement said Aisha had no direct, indirect or the remotest connection with William Jefferson's corruption scandal in the United States.
The presidential aide challenged the Ekiti State governor 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 Shehu, "free speech does not entitle Governor Fayose to falsely accuse innocent people of crimes they knew nothing about."
He therefore 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.
