President Muhammadu Buhari
Buhari has fired a senior aide for leaking Presidential information.
NewsOne Nigeria reports that Nigeria’s President, Muhammadu Buhari, has reportedly fired a Lai Yahaya, top policy adviser, over allegations of providing internal State House information to an online newspaper.
This online news platform understands that the sacked Yahaya, a former adviser to the Nigerian presidency on electric power initiatives, was accused of being the central source for on story on PeoplesGazette, which exposed Bolaji, the son of Buhari’s Chief of Staff Ibrahim Gambari.
The former presidential aide according to sources who spoke to PeoplesGazette, has since relocated from Nigeria to Europe amidst fears of further retribution.
“They said he leaked a story to your newspaper and they cannot work with him in confidence,” a presidency official said. “They tried over and again to get him to confess, saying that some details that were revealed in the story could only have been divulged by him.”
On the other hand, the PeoplesGazette has denied Yahaya, a graduate of Oxford University’s Balliol College, played any role in the story that exposed Gambari’s son.
The article which which led to the sacking of the presidential aide is an October 2020 story that cast a spotlight on Bolaji Gambari as the new head of a cabal of administration associates inside the Presidential Villa.
The Gazette had also accused the President Buhari administration of pressuring network service providers to cut off connections to its site.
Meanwhile, NewsOne Nigeria reports that the sacked presidential aide is a lawyer and sustainable energy consultant who previously worked at the State House until 2017 under late chief of staff Abba Kyari, following which he served as an adviser to Raila Odinga at the African Union.
Ibrahim Gambari recalled Yahaya to the State House as the top adviser on power infrastructure, serving only a few months on the job before being sacked on false allegations. This happened shortly after his appointment in May 2020.