Special Adviser to President Muhammadu Buhari on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, has insisted that the man inside Aso Rock Villa, Nigeria’s seat of power, is the “Buhari Nigerians voted for in 2015 and 2019, and not one Jubril from Sudan.”
Adesina who wrote on his Facebook page on Thursday, Decemer 17, while celebrating Buhari’s 78th birthday, faulted the claim by Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), who has continued to tell Nigerians that the man in Aso Rock is a clone.
Kanu had posted on his Twitter handle in 2017 that Buhari had died during his medical treatment in the UK and a clone called Jubrin from Sudan was hurriedly installed to replace him.
“This is Jubril from Sudan and not Muhammadu Buhari, who died during the medical vacation in 2017, some people say. You have a clone in Aso Villa, not Buhari. Idiocy, sadly believed by even some intellectuals,” Kanu had posted.
However, in a piece titled “Buhari at 78: If only we knew this President,” Adesina poured encomiums on the President, insisting that Buhari is not only “hale and hearty but full of life and has a lot in the offing for Nigerians.”
Part of the article put out by Adesina reads:
“Let me tell you a story. On the day the President finally returned to the country in August 2017, after months of absence, the Chief of Defence Staff, Gen. Abayomi Olonisakin, was giving out his daughter in marriage.
“I had attended the church service, decked in complete Agbada, with a cap to match. From the wedding, I went straight to the airport to join the reception party.
“We formed a welcome line, as we usually do. And as the President shook each person, he had one wisecrack or the other to say. When he got to me, he took my hand and said: ‘Adesina, this is the best I’ve seen you dressed.’
“We both laughed heartily, and the television cameras captured it. I remember that many people asked me later what had tickled the President and me that we laughed so uproariously.
“Jubril from Sudan? Would he know my name as Adesina? Would he know I rarely wear Agbada? How ridiculous can some people be?
“Another story. The journalist Lindsay Barret had been a longtime friend of the President. One day, he sent me to give his greetings.
“When I did, the President said: ‘Lindsay Barret. I remember meeting him at the war front in 1968. He was covering the war. There was a day he was almost killed in an ambush, and he then described himself as a ‘devout coward,’ who was lucky to be alive.
“Jubril of Sudan? And he remembers Barret, whom he met at the war front in 1968? Tell it to the marines.”
