Femi Adesina, Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to President Muhammadu Buhari, has said that the suspected leaker of the President’s unedited script for Monday’s broadcast has been arrested.
Mr Adesina stated this on Thursday in an article, although he did not mention the suspect’s name.
The President’s unedited script leaked minutes before his actual address on Monday to ease the lockdown in Lagos, Ogun and the Federal Capital Territory.
Adesina said the suspect left digital trails with which he was tracked.
“Igbo people speak of the proverbial lizard that ruined his own mother’s funeral. That was what the hidden hostile hand did. But he forgot that in these days of technology, almost everything leaves a trail. Before the end of that evening, computer evidences had narrowed down the suspect, and he was already answering for his evil action,” he wrote.
The presidential aide said part of what gave out the document was the false date it carried.
“Another tell-tale to the dubiousness of the document was the date it gave. It said the lockdown in the affected states and the FCT would be eased from May 2, while the authentic copy bore May 4,” he wrote.
“There were some other discrepancies. Paragraphs that had been excised from the final copy were still intact, and the document was riddled with spelling and grammatical errors, which you would rarely find in a presidential broadcast, which would have passed through a number of select and trusted hands.”
Adesina described the suspect as an “enemy of the state” and a “house mouse” whose intent was to cause maximum confusion, which he succeeded in doing to some extent.
Many had initially believed that the leak originated from the Office of the Secretary-General of the Federation with direct access to the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19.
