The Presidency on
Friday described the claim that President Muhammadu Buhari is shy while in
company with women, reportedly made by one Gideon Samani on Thursday and
published by a national newspaper, describing the claim as totally fallacious.
The Special Adviser to
the President on Media and Publicity, Mr. Femi Adesina, said this in a
statement made available to journalists.
Adesina said
the subsequent attribution of the supposedly “low number” of female
ministerial nominees to Buhari’s alleged shyness around women
was therefore baseless and a figment of the imagination of the said
Samani, who he added was falsely described as the ‘Senior Special Assistant
(Political Matters) to the President’.
The presidential
spokesman added that the assertion by the alleged presidential aide that Buhari
was “very shy dealing with the opposite sex” because “he has been interacting
mostly with men,” was received by the President with shock and
consternation.
The statement read in
part, “For one thing, there is no Senior Special Assistant, Political Matters,
in the office of the President for now and Mr. Samani, who was said to have
spoken as the Representative of the Secretary to the Government of the
Federation at a public function yesterday (Thursday), is not an aide of the
President.
“Mr. Samani is
certainly not an official spokesman for the President. Therefore, he could not
have spoken on behalf of President Buhari, who is the President of all
Nigerians, men and women alike.
“President Buhari has a
wife, many daughters and female relatives whom he loves dearly. He also
had a mother that he adored. How then could he be shy in the company of women,
to the point of allegedly not appointing them into public offices, on account
of not being comfortable in their company?
“Nigerian women can be
assured that the President holds them in the highest esteem and will always
give them due consideration in the discharge of his official
responsibilities.
“The statements
attributed to Mr Samani are untrue and unauthorised. They should therefore be
disregarded.”
-Punch
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