Jonathan using fake US envoy to discredit Buhari

Jonathan using fake US envoy to discredit Buhari - APC campaign

President  Jonathan has hired fake US envoy as media consultant masquerading as former United States ambassador to launch attack on the All Progressives Congress presidential candidate Muhammadu Buhari ahead of next Saturday’s presidential election, the Buhari campaign has said.

The opposition part was reacting to an opinion article published in Washington Post and published by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as a front-page advertorial in some Nigerian newspapers, authored by Richard Grenell, which implied that Buhari is an Islamic fundamentalist and will therefore be defeated at the March 28 poll.

In the adverts, the PDP described Grenell as a former US ambassador, whereas he was actually a media aide to former US ambassadors to the United Nations, a statement by the APC campaign spokesperson Malam Garba Shehu said on Sunday.

Shehu described the advertisement as provocative and “the handiwork of a failed president and his ruinous party to tarnish the hard won credibility and integrity of Buhari.”

The APC campaign said Grenell was never a US envoy but a spokesperson to the former US ambassadors to the United Nations, who is now doing media consultancy to Jonathan.

“For the avoidance of doubt Richard Grenell is not a US ex-envoy but a former spokesperson for four past US ambassadors to the United Nations,” Shehu said.

The statement explained that “according to his bio, in 2009 Richard Grenell launched Capitol Media Partners, an international strategic media and public affairs consultancy.His agency provides strategic counsel for companies and individuals (like Jonathan and the PDP) facing critical media and public policy challenges.”

It added that “Mr Grenell's firm ‘Capitol Media Partners’ was recruited by the Presidency and the PDP to say those unfortunate statements about General Buhari. Mr Grenell made those statements not as an envoy or diplomat but as a media contractor for the Presidency and the PDP. You may confirm the authenticity of Mr Grenell from his firm's website http://capitolmediapartners.com/.”

The APC campaign office said the latest lie by this government and the ruling PDP underscores the new low to which Nigeria’s foreign policy drift has sunk under the Jonathan government, which hires all manners of local and global quacks, to manage their tattered image marked by cluelessness, incompetence, squander-mania, meteoric corruption and dearth of developmental ideas.