Osinbajo Is PMB’s Closest Confidante â€' Presidency

In a statement by senior special assistant to the president on media and publicity, Mallam Garba Shehu, the presidency regretted that over the past few months, some media organizations had been publishing a stream of allegations against some persons around the president, attributing them to “persistent rumors and speculations”, with no other objective but to generate hatred and disgust against the hardworking people in the villa.

This was in response to a recent report in a national daily  titled, ‘Buhari’s return: Aso Rock cabal stages a comeback, sidelines Osinbajo’, the presidency described the story as a recycled hate campaign.

The SSA to the president had this to say as regards the said report “To begin with, it is absolutely nonsensical and absurd to write that in one week of the President’s return, the Vice President has been sidelined. Quite to the contrary, the Vice President remains the confidante and the closest adviser to the President.

“He has attended all the President’s engagements all through the week with the exception of two: one, the VP was away to Taraba State and two, the Juma’at Muslim prayer because he is a Christian.

“It is difficult to understand what anyone wants to achieve peddling such falsehood that the President, himself a former military general and Head of State and Commander-In-Chief is subject to undue influence and manipulation. It is both ridiculous and inconceivable.

“As someone who works very closely with President Buhari, I can testify to how my years of experience as a newspaper editor are often put to the test by the sheer thoroughness with which the President edits every single document brought to his desk”.

Explaining further, the presidential spokesman noted that every memo, statement, speech brought to the president is subject to his intense scrutiny, right down to the placement of commas and full stops.

“Therefore, alleging that President Buhari signs memos brought to him by government officials or a so-called cabal without reading them, immediately casts doubts on the credibility of the ubiquitous unnamed sources that the reporters of these articles quote”, he added.