One
of the top news stories of the week is the plagiarism of President
Barack Obama’s 2008 speech by Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari.
On Friday, President Buhari admitted that he stole some lines from Obama’s 2008 victory speech which were inserted into a speech he delivered last week at the official launch of Nigeria’s “Change Begins With Me” campaign.
A statement by the Nigerian presidency
blamed the intellectual property theft on an “overzealous staff” and
vowed to mete out disciplinary actions against the staff, an unnamed
deputy director in Nigeria’s Federal Civil Service.
“There was a mistake by an overzealous
staff and we regret that this has happened,” a statement by Garba Shehu,
a spokesperson, said. “Already, a deputy director in the Presidency has
accepted responsibility for the insertion of the contentious
paragraph. This serious oversight will be investigated thoroughly and
appropriate sanction meted.”
However, sources at the presidency have told SaharaReporters that Mamman Daura, a nephew of President Muhammadu Buhari and one of the most powerful men in Buhari’s government, was the source of the speech which has embarrassed the president and the country.
The online tabloid write:
The
two sources claimed that Mr. Daura had hijacked the task of providing
speeches for the Nigerian president, adding that he often threw away
draft speeches that he did not commission.
Asked whether the
president’s nephew personally wrote the controversial speech that stole
Mr. Obama’s words without attribution, our sources said that Mr. Daura
certainly produced the speech. “It is possible he wrote it himself, or
he went and asked somebody else to go and write it and bring,” said one
source. The other stated, “I can tell you that nobody writes speech
anymore for President Buhari but Mamman Daura.”
According to our
sources, Mr. Daura was behind President Buhari’s inauguration speech,
which lifted a famous quote from the late French leader Charles de
Gaulle. They said the president’s nephew was also solely responsible for
writing or commissioning Mr. Buhari’s now infamous speech entreating
Nigerians to accept the idea of “Change begins with me.”
Our sources
disclosed that the Presidency was trying to fool the public through its
spokesman, Garba Shehu, who said a deputy director had written the now
widely ridiculed speech. Mr. Shehu had also declared that the
speechwriter would be punished.
Our investigator
discovered that Mr. Attah Esa is the only deputy director attached to
the State House media office. His duties are concerned only with
newspaper reviews.
Our sources
disclosed that, unlike former Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo, Umaru
Yar’Adua, and Goodluck Jonathan, President Buhari does not have an
identified official speechwriter. SaharaReporters learned that
presidential aides, Femi Adesina and Garba Shehu, often only get to see
President Buhari’s speeches when such speeches are distributed at
official functions. “That’s why Nigerians no longer get an advance
synopsis of presidential speeches online as happened during Jonathan’s
era,” said one source.
The same source
added: “Under President Buhari, all types of speeches, whether on the
economy, education or terrorism, are organized solely by Mamman Daura,
who thinks he knows everything. Buhari’s Personal Assistant, Sabiu Yusuf
(popularly known as Tunde Idiagbon) then types the speeches.”
Our sources
disclosed that Mr. Daura even discouraged any input from MDA. “He is
known not to use drafts submitted by MDAs, even on technical issues such
as budget, climate change and maternal health,” one of them said.
During Jonathan’s
Presidency, Oronto Douglas, who died last year, served as the official
speechwriter. Draft speeches from MDAs were submitted to him for
vetting, and he consulted with the agencies throughout in order to
ensure objectivity and correctness.
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