Senior Special Adviser to President Buhari on Media and Publicity, Femi
Adesina, says he does not need to speak with President Buhari directly
to aunthenticate his health status.
In an interview with Channels TV
this morning, Adesina maintained that he gets all the information about
President Buhari from those around him including his personal physician,
PA and domestic staff.
“All those I speak with, his
personal physician, his PA, his domestic aide, I can tell them to take
the phone to Mr President and knowing Mr President, he will speak with
me but I have decided not to because I do not need that phone
conversation to authenticate the health of Mr President. There is enough
authentication. There is one from the aacting president, there is from
the senate president, there is from the speaker of the House of
Representatives and many others and the President himself in the
communication yesterday said no cause for worry, no cause for alarm. So I
do not need to authenticate the state of health of Mr President by
asking to speak with him. If he says let me speak with Adesina, I will
speak with him. But I don not need to go out of my way to say I must
speak with him”he said
Adesina mainatined that all the information he has sent out to Nigerians about President Buhari are from third party sources
“That
is correct. I never claimed that it was direct. Never at any time did I
claim it was direct from him. The last time I came here, I told you
that I speak with people around him everyday and that is the position.
As at yesterday, I still spoke with those people”.
Asked
if he is sure that the information given to him by the third party
individuals is true, Adesina said “It depends on the kind of peson you
are speaking for. If I know that I speaking for a shifty and sneaky
fellow, then I will not trust what is communicated to me. But I know the
person I am speaking for. I know he is straightforward. This is a
President that does not want you to color anything on his behalf. We
that are his personal aides, we are like family. We are not only
friends. We are colleagues and all that. I believe what is transmitted
to me 100%”.
On whether he can schedule a
5-minutes interview with president Buhari so that he can speak to
Nigerians, Adesina said “Yes we can always raise it with Mr President
but don’t forget that the ultimate decision will be that of Mr
President. I can recommend, I can tell him that it is needful to do this
at this point in time. He will either say yes or no”.
On
why he didn’t go with President Buhari to the UK, he said “When Mr
President left, it was considered a private trip. It was a vacation, it
was a holiday. You don’t need your media man during a holiday. That was
why I stayed back. If I was there, of course, the strategy may have been
different”.
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