November 3, 2017

The Presidency has dismissed media reports that there was a fight between the Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari and Head Of Service of the Federation, Winifred Oyo-Ita at the Wednesday’s Federal Executive Council’s meeting.

It also denied the report claiming that President Muhammadu Buhari summoned Kyari and Oyo-Ita over the alleged fight.

The Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and publicity, Malam Garba Shehu, made the denial in a statement issued in Abuja on Friday.

Shehu described the newspaper reports of the alleged fight between top government officials as fabrications that could only have been conjured by correspondents who would probably make better fiction writers than journalists.

“By tradition, the media organiSations send their best reporters to the State House; this should reflect, at all times on the quality of reporting.

“I am a journalist myself, and in journalism, you are not supposed to report anything other than the facts of what you heard or observed directly, or what you were told by a firsthand or authoritative eyewitness.

“You cannot add two and two to make twenty-two and present it to the public as news.”

The presidential aide insisted that it was impossible for the conversation between the Kyari, and Oyo Ita to have been heard by any journalist.

He said this was because the distance between the State House correspondents and the two government officials as they addressed the Vice President at Wednesday’s FEC meeting, would have made their conversation completely inaudible to the journalists.

“People can debate and argue over issues, but to suggest that there was a feud, a fight or a clash was to take matters beyond what they were,’’ he added.

Shehu also dismissed as false the suggestion that the two government officials were summoned by President Buhari over the alleged skirmish, referring to that conclusion as yet another example of conjecture.

He said: “Top government officials of that calibre see the President on a regular basis.

“To suggest that they were summoned to see him as a result of a so-called feud is just a fabrication, a conclusion that is below the level of responsible journalism that we expect from our State House correspondents.’’