Was Pres Buhari's COVID-19 Speech Leaked Before Broadcast? Here Is What The Presidency Has To Say

President Buhari

Yesterday, many Nigerians were left in shock over the leaked President Buhari’s speech, even before he went on air to address the nation.

Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina while speaking on This Morning programme on TVC News, has now disclosed that the person who leaked Buhari’s draft speech hours before he delivered his address to the nation on Monday night, has been traced.

Asked to clear the confusion on the lockdown where some newspapers carried out different date, the Presidential Spokesman said:

“There is just one authentic copy of the broadcast which is the one released from the media office. But then, I recognise that a couple of hours before the broadcast itself, a copy of the purported speech had been circulating particularly on WhatsApp. If you compare the two, yes there are some similarities but then there are also wide differences.

“You have just mentioned the effective day particularly of the gradual easing of the lockdown. What happened was that somebody got hold of the initial draft of the broadcast and played hanky panky with it by releasing it through the social media. If you know the processes that a broadcast goes through before it gets recorded,the script will originate from the relevant government agency, department, parastatal of ministry, whoever heads that agency, ministry or parastatal sign up on it and then they sent it to the presidential office.

“When it gets to the presidential office, it gets through a number of hands again, because the President’s thoughts must be infused and injected into that draft. There are some things that may be in it that the President may completely not agree with. “Finally, it comes to the media office, and I sign on it which I also did yesterday before the broadcast was recorded I signed on the final copy before the broadcast was recorded.

So some hours before the recording was played back, I saw something circulating on social media, I knew that that was not the copy that I signed off on. Then we began to investigate. It has been found out that the original script from inception was what somebody laid hands-on and released to the social media.”