IGBOZURUOKE FORUM

By  Abdulaziz Abdulaziz,

Between himself, his wife and close lieutenants, President Muhammadu Buhari has at least 101 aides, PREMIUM TIMES can report.

However, over 50 percent of those aides are attached to the office of the vice president.

PREMIUM TIMES has obtained a list of presidential appointees serving as aides to President Buhari, his wife, Aisha Buhari, the vice president, Yemi Osinbajo, and other government officials.

Apart from the two men, Mr. Buhari’s Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari, has eight aides attached to him.

Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, has six presidential aides atttached to his office, while the Secretary to the Government of the Federation has five of such aides.

The wife of the president has three recognised aides while the two presidential media assistants are attached to the Minister of information and Culture, Lai Mohammed.

Mr. Osinbajo is said to have appointed at least 15 of those aides between June and August, 2017 when Mr. Buhari was away on medical vacation.

‘ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN’

The list shows that Mr. Buhari’s office has aides on wide range of issues, from key areas of administration and media to social events and housekeeping.

The area with the highest number of aides is media, which has eight appointees – at least one known media aide of the president is however not listed.

The eight in the list, apart from the two official spokespersons of the president, include two aides on new/social media, two on photography and one aide each for “TV Media” and “Broadcast Media”.

LION SHARE FOR OSINBAJO

But while Mr. Buhari has a total number of 24 aides, Mr. Osinbajo has 52, going by the list.

Apart from the initial 21 appointees in the office of the vice president, who handle key areas from economy to social investment programme and media, the vice president has another list of 31 aides to his name.

For the latter list of 31, the aides are grouped into two; 14 are identified as donor funded while the rest are categorised as “government funded”.

Those identified as being funded by donors include senior special assistants on power, IDPs, power privatization, monitoring and evaluation, among others.

Omissions

However, like a previous list of appointees officially released by the president, this list is also not without omissions.

Omitted from the list, by PREMIUM TIMES’s check, are at least one aide each for Mr. Buhari and Mr. Osinbajo.

Bashir Ahmad, a Personal Assistant of Mr. Buhari on New Media is excluded so also is a special assistant to the president on inter-governmental affairs, working in the office of the vice president, Abdulrahman Baffa Yola.

The list also does not include security personnel and civil servants attached to these individuals, who an insider said are also in their dozens.

For example, both the president and the vice president are said to have protocol officers and chief security officers.

The president also has an army colonel serving as his Aide de Camp, ADC. A senior police officer is serving the vice president in similar role.

“This is in addition to a routine of other officials deployed from all over the government to serve the two men,” a presidency source said.

Premium Times