Buhari’s Aide Narrates How NTA, AIT Humiliated Them During 2015 Presidential Election

President Muhammadu Buhari has restated his gratitude to Nigerians for his victory at the general elections saying he emerged winner against all odds.

Speaking at The Red Media Summit in Lagos, Thursday,? Mr. Buhari that he won the election despite the deployment of state forces against him.

“Muhammadu Buhari’s goodwill greetings to you is on account of the fact that he won an election that many people think he was not going to win,” said Garba Shehu, Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, ??who represented Mr. Buhari.

“Americans say that elections are won on the dollar. It’s very improbable that anybody can win an election without money. We didn’t have advertising money on our campaign. Even when we had little money to spend on advertising, the Nigerian Television Authority was not making available to us slots, neither was AIT.

“I remember on a particular night I called NTA, they had 16 slots of one minute adverts and I said I wanted to buy one minute for the Buhari campaign, they said all 16 had been sold.

“Some other instances that exposed the partisan nature of the NTA. Money was returned to us, from AIT money was returned to us. They simply won’t advertise for us.”

Mr. Shehu expressed the presidency’s gratitude to Statecraft, an arm on The Red Media, for ?”selling an unlikely candidate to a very skeptical nation.”

“The day there was a security siege at my home, I woke up to see that my house had been surrounded by armed policemen in the course of the campaign,” Mr. Shehu said.

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Ebola Volunteers Return With Sad Tales Of Maltreatment By AU Officials, Nigerian Govt.

Nigerians who volunteered to help fight the deadly Ebola disease in Sierra Leone and Liberia, returned home a fortnight ago, after spending about six months on the frontline against a virus that ravaged several countries last year, killing over 20,000.

The volunteers returned alive and well, although they are yet to complete an expected 21-day quarantine period.

But they have sad tales of deprivation and maltreatment, and accuse officials of the Nigerian government and the African Union of stealing from them while they risked their lives.

On Wednesday, some of the volunteers were locked in a hotel in Abuja where they had camped since returning to Nigeria, after days of bickering with health ministry officials.

PREMIUM TIMES’ investigation, interviews with officials of the Nigerian government and the AU, and several volunteers since their arrival in Abuja, show a programme that was beset by crisis, poor management and fraud, worse than the hotel scandal.

“I have now confirmed that serving or representing Nigeria is a waste of time as the country treats those who have done her proud shabbily,” said Oladimeji Adepoju, a medical doctor volunteer.

Mr. Adepoju and 197 other Nigerian volunteers travelled to the two West African countries in December, to help stem the tide of Ebola. Their ordeal began even before they departed Nigeria.

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