Red alert in Presidency, ‘Enemy of the State’ invades Aso Rock, leaks Buhari’s document

There is emerging red alert in the Nigerian presidency over acts of treachery in the highest hierarchy of the government in the country. The media office of President Muhammadu Buhari has raised alarm over perceived invasion of the State House, Abuja, by ‘Enemy of the State’ on treachery mission of leaking official documents of the President.

The Special Adviser to President Buhari on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, had raised alarm that “an Enemy of the State struck in Nigeria on Monday…”, describing the incident as “real-life act of sabotage from somebody who does not wish his own country well at all, and who derived a sinister kind of pleasure from undermining the system.” The Enemy of the State was said to had leaked the draft of the president’s national broadcast on Monday which was circulated in the social media before the time of the broadcast on Monday evening.

Adesina had narrated that President Muhammadu Buhari was to broadcast to the country by 8.00p.m. to give an update on the battle against COVID-19, and what becomes of the lockdown that had lasted four weeks, particularly, in the Federal Capital Territory, Lagos and Ogun States. He added that Kano was also a point of heavy interest, with the strange deaths ravaging the state.

Adesina decried that as the country waited for the President with great expectations, a purported copy of the broadcast began to circulate on social media from about 4.00p.m.

The S.A Media said that after looking at the circulating document, within one minute he knew it was a rogue copy, noting the inconsistency paragraphing of the ‘fake’ broadcast copy in circulation. He said: “it was completely different from the one I had been part of producing, and which had been recorded for broadcast by the President.”

Adesina added that he carried out inquiry to trace the point of betrayal of the president with the leaked document from its origin to the conclusion stage, and found that someone spirited out the draft speech and fed it into the social media while yet to go through scrutiny and editing to get the final copy which was recorded for broadcast by the president.

Adesina had declared: “I made a few phone calls to those of us involved with the script, right from origination, which was from outside the Presidency, to final editing, which I did, and the conclusion was easy to reach. “Somebody had spirited out the original draft, which had gone through many stages of fine-tuning in terms of content and language, and thinking that it was a world exclusive in terms of artifice and underhand action, he fed it into the social media.

“Who would do such a thing, except an Enemy of the State, someone who wants to ridicule the government, cause utmost confusion in the polity, and smirk his lips in malevolent pleasure, as the government, and possibly the media handlers of the President were flagellated, and taken to the cleaners.”

Adesina, however, said the culprit has been arrested.

The act is wholesomely unpatriotic in all its ramifications. Rather than Adesina’s concept of “Enemy of the State’, the presidency may look inward for “enemy from Within”. There are indications that the incident portrays loss of confidence in the current government and cracks in the Buhari administration.

Like Adesina noted, sensitive documents in the presidency would be leaked in same manner if accessed by the perpetrator.