Chidi Samuel|
President Muhammadu Buhari and Amina Zakari, a national commissioner at the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), do not share blood relationship, Garba Shehu, a presidential spokesman has said.
Shehu made the declaration on Friday via a press statement in apparent reaction to the controversy her appointment to head the INEC committee on collation centre has generated.
The opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) while rejecting her appointment alleged she is a blood relation of the president.
Shehu said, “President Buhari and Commissioner Amina Zakari don’t share a family relationship. An inter-marriage occurred in their extended families, so the imputation of blood relationship between the President and the electoral commissioner is a simple lie.”
“In their desperation, they forget that it was the PDP government that appointed her in the first place and they keep lying, as they have been caught doing on so many issues, by imputing a blood relationship between her and President Muhammadu Buhari.
“What is even more curious about all the fuss coming from the PDP is that they, as a ruling party picked Mrs Zakari, judging her by her own merit and made her an electoral commissioner.
“She served so well with distinction as can be verified from the records that President Buhari approved the recommendation that she be reappointed, as he did other PDP nominees for second-term of four years.”
He said the PDP, therefore, has no moral right to “keep harassing this hardworking mother unless they have a hidden agenda.”