BY LINUS CHIBUIKE
SPECIAL Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, said, on Monday, that the Presidency would not raise the alarm about a smear campaign plot involving the media if there was no evidence.
He said the first alarm that was raised last December must have scared the plotters a bit because “they retreated,” noting that they regrouped last week and were about launching the campaign against the President Muhammadu Buhari administration when the latest alarm was raised.
Adesina, who spoke in an Arise Television interview, said, “There wouldn’t have been an alarm if there was no evidence; and you know that that was the second alarm in about five or six weeks. We have impeccable evidence that the plot was afoot.
“When we raised the first evidence in December, may be it scared them a bit; they retreated, but as at last week, they came back and were about launching. And when we had the unimpeachable evidence again that it was going to be done, up to the point of those they had interviews with; what those ones have said, documents to unleash, we just had to warn the public, else they be hoodwinked into believing falsehood.”
He also noted that, contrary to allegations in some quarters that the alarm was a plot to clamp down on the media, the Buhari administration had never clamped down on the media and would not do so.
Insisting that a smear campaign plot was being planned, the Presidential spokesperson declined to name his sources, saying when the hatchet job begins, Nigerians would know the identities of the alleged plotters.
“They can’t be fifth columnists because fifth columnists are inside and we did not say they were inside. They are not inside the government,” he said.
“Would I want to mention names? No. You never reveal your sources at the risk of anything. It will be quite unprofessional to name them now but by the time they go ahead and publish those hatchet jobs, readers can then discern. So, they will reveal themselves,” he added.
On Transparency International’s latest ranking which indicated that corruption was worse under Buhari in the last one year, Adesina said, “We don’t need an international organisation to come and authenticate what we are doing in Nigeria because we know what we are doing and how far it is going.
“We know strides that are being taken in the anti-corruption war and if an international organisation chooses not to see it, fine.”
