Chairman of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) Section on Public Interest and Development Law (SPIDEL), Monday Ubani, on Thursday said Nigeria’s First Lady, Aisha Buhari, has indeed added flesh, as posted by Aminu Adamu, an embattled student of the Federal University, Dutse, Jigawa State.
Newsbreak.ng reports that Adamu is currently in detention for allegedly defaming Aisha, the wife of President Muhammadu Buhari.
The 24-year-old undergraduate was alleged to have published a defamatory statement on his Twitter handle against Mrs Buhari.
In the allegedly offending tweet, Adamu, who is a final year student studying Environmental Management, posted a rotund picture of the first lady with a caption in Hausa saying, “Mama is feeding fat on poor people’s money.”
The tweet was posted on June 8 but Adamu, trailed by a team of detectives, was arrested in Dutse, on November 18 and whisked to Abuja, the Nigerian capital city.
After nearly two weeks in detention, he was arraigned on Tuesday before a judge, Yusuf Halilu, of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) High Court at Maitama, where he pleaded not guilty and was remanded at Suleja prison in Niger State.
Reacting to the development which has caused uproar on social media, Ubani,a human righst lawyer stated that public office holders must be tolerant. He also said Adamu’s assertion about the president’s wife adding flesh is “the truth”.
Adamu: Aisha Buhari has added flesh.
– Monday Ubani, Chairman, SPIDEL#CTVTweets pic.twitter.com/H82opQt6ni
— Channels Television (@channelstv) December 1, 2022
“The people who occupy public office must be very tolerant,” Ubani said on Channels TV’s Sunrise Daily.
“Because the issue of somebody criticising you will always be there. It happens all over the world.
“The former First Lady, Patience Jonathan, was called all manner of names, we never hear a situation whereby she asked security agents to go and arrest anybody.
“I think that what has been said that the president’s wife has added some flesh is the truth.
“So if a young man says so and you feel offended, you can ask police to invite him and interrogate him, but not the manner in which he was abducted and taken to custody, and the next thing you have arraigned him.
“I don’t think it is normal. We cannot in any way use a sledge-hammer to kill a fly.
“A young student criticised the wife of the president and he gets locked up? To me, that is going too extreme.
“She has to release that young man. That is the only way we can forgive Aisha Buhari.”
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