Blaming Buhari for Nigeria’s Woes: Vanguard Apologises to Oby Ezekwesili

Blaming Buhari for Nigeria’s Woes: Vanguard Apologises to Oby Ezekwesili

Vanguard newspapers has apologised to former education minister, Mrs Oby Ezekwesili for falsely attributing a critical comment about President Muhammadu Buhari to her.

The former minister had on Monday strongly reacted to the newspaper’s publication of what appeared to be an analysis of the genesis of Nigeria’s current economic crisis which the newspaper claimed she wrote.

Ezekwesili had also threatened to institute legal action against Vanguard newspaper after the public holidays, after calling on the paper to take down the fabricated criticism of the president.

On Tuesday, Vanguard published a retraction and an apology to Ezekwesili on its website. And it read thus:

“On September 12, 2016 edition of Vanguard , we published a story purportedly from the whatsApp message of former Education Minister, Oby Ezekwesili, blaming President Muhammed Buhari for Nigeria’s economic woes.

“We have since discovered that the Mrs. Ezekwesili did not make the comment .

“We hereby retract the comment and sincerely apologize to the Mrs. Oby Ezekwesili. It was not our intention to denigrate her or pitch her against the government.”

In times past, Tribune newspaper and CNBC have had cause to apologise to the former minister for wrongly attributing comments she did not make to her.