The Presidency on Friday raised an alarm over the claim of a planned smear campaign targeted at President Muhammadu Buhari, using some online newspapers and blogs.
The claim was contained in a statement released by the Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, titled “Unrelenting plot to wage a smear campaign against President Buhari.”
This is the Presidential spokesman’s second public notice in a month. The first was in December 2020, in which he stated that there was a deliberate attempt to smear his principal’s image and also the portrayal of him as not being in charge of the affairs of the government
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He had claimed then that an online platform had been procured to launch a campaign of calumny against Buhari with heavy monetary inducement while an offshore medium had been hired for the assignment.
Still toeing the line of last year’s statement, Adesina claimed in the latest statement that the planned campaign of calumny against the President is scheduled to be launched anytime soon through editorials and “purported special investigative stories.”
The presidential spokesman alleged that the plan was designed to further exacerbate tension in the land, by portraying the President as pandering to ethnic and other primordial tendencies, contrary to his pledge to belong to all Nigerians.
The statement read, “Impeccable security findings indicate that those behind the plot have procured online blogs and newspapers, which are to launch coordinated publications, alleging subjugation and suppression of a particular religion and ethnic groups.
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“A specific medium has so far contacted some opinion leaders, especially those very critical of President Buhari.
“Part of the planned publication is to make unwary readers believe that the President has continually used the powers of his office to shield and protect an ethnic group against crimes of murder, kidnappings, rape and banditry in the southern, middle belt and some northern states.
