by Kayode Sesan | Breaking Times
The Nigerian Presidency on Sunday, July 5, 2015 declared that Aisha Buhari, wife of the President of Nigeria is not on Twitter.
In a statement by Garba Shehu, Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity to Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari, “It is also pertinent to state at this point that neither the wife of the President, Mrs. Aisha Buhari nor the other children are presently on Twitter, Facebook or the various other platforms.”
This is coming as a shocking surprise to many Nigerians in the social media as two handles are officially linked to Aisha Buhari, as wife of the President of Nigeria. The two handles are @ABuhari and @FLON.
@FLON is verified by Twitter. @NGRPresident – the official and verified handle of the Nigerian President follows only 7 Twitter accounts as at the time of this report and one of those 7 accounts is @ABuhari belonging to Aisha Buhari.
Also, the official Twitter account of the Nigerian Presidential Villa @AsoRock is a Twitter verified account and one of the only 4 accounts it follows is that of Aisha Buhari.
This untidy development confirms an earlier report by this newspaper, which exposed what appears to be a fraudulent violation of Twitter ethics made possible by President Buhari’s social media handlers and some staff at Twitter.
READ: Buhari’s Handlers and the Social Media Fraud at Twitter Nigeria
The @FLON – First Lady of Nigeria official handle is linked to Aisha Buhari and was verified by Twitter even before President Buhari was inaugurated President, a strange deviation from the verification procedure of Twitter according to investigations by this newspaper.
According to an inside source at the Buhari Presidential Campaign who spoke on condition of anonymity to Breaking Times on Sunday, the Nigerian Presidency paid $261,000 for the creation and verification of 7 Twitter accounts – @NGRPresident, @FLON, @AsoRock, @MBuhari, @ABuhari and @ZMBuhari. Already, 4 of these accounts have been verified by Twitter.
Meanwhile, there are frantic efforts by President Buhari’s handlers to verify the last handle, @ZMBuhari which belongs to one of the daughters of the President after her former handle @Zahra_Buhari labeled President Obama a “Child Fucker” for legalizing homosexuality.
The Nigerian Presidency’s denial on Sunday that the handle was hacked was immediately followed by a change in the handle’s avatar and tweeting behavior, whilst a new handle @ZMBuhari was created for Zahra, the President’s daughter.
READ: Nigerian Presidency In Spin Frenzy Over Zahra Buhari’s @POTUS ‘Child Fuckers’ Tweet
Nigerians have questioned the importance attributed through the use of taxpayers’ money for managing the image of the President’s daughter.
Observers say there is certainly the need for Twitter to investigate the circumstances surrounding how the @FLON handle got verified in the face of Sunday’s statement by Nigeria’s Presidential Spokesman that the First Lady of Nigeria is not on Twitter.
