The Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, has faulted the claim by the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, that the man in Aso rock is not President Muhammadu Buhari but Jubril from Sudan. Adesina in his article titled: ‘Buhari at 78: If only we knew this president’, poured encomium on Buhari, insisting that Mr President is hale and heart. Kanu had argued that the man in Aso villa is not Buhari but a clone. He supported his claims with pictorial evidence. Reacting, Adesina condemned Kanu’s hypothetical submission, describing his narratives as Idiocy, sadly believed by some intellectuals. His words: “This is Jubril from Sudan and not Muhammadu Buhari, who had 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. “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 unusually 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 me and the President, 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 long time 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 warfront in 1968? Tell it to the marines.”
• Culled from Vanguard