Amina Zakari not related to Buhari by blood, says Garba Shehu

Garba Shehu, presidential spokesman, says President Muhammadu Buhari and Amina Zakari, a national commissioner at the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), do not share blood relationship. 

The presidential spokesman said this in a statement on Friday.

Zakari’s appointment to head the INEC committee on collation centre has been generating a controversy.

The PDP had alleged she is related to the president and her new position would compromise the electoral process.

“President Buhari and Commissioner Amina Zakari don’t share a family relationship. An inter-marriage occurred in their extended families, so the imputation of blood relationship between the President and the electoral commissioner is a simple lie,” he said.

“In their desperation, they forget that it was the PDP government that appointed her in the first place and they keep lying, as they have been caught doing on so many issues, by imputing a blood relationship between her and President Muhammadu Buhari.

“What is even more curious about all the fuss coming from the PDP is that they, as a ruling party picked Mrs Zakari, judging her by her own merit and made her an electoral commissioner.

“She served so well with distinction as can be verified from the records that President Buhari approved the recommendation that she be reappointed, as he did other PDP nominees for second-term of four years.”

He said the PDP, therefore, has no moral right to “keep harassing this hardworking mother unless they have a hidden agenda.”

Zakari had been at the commission’s department of health and welfare after being redeployed as the head of electoral operations and logistics.

Her redeployment took place after the PDP accused her of working for Buhari and demanded that she be moved.

She was once appointed acting chairman of INEC.