The Senior Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on Media and Publicity, Mr. Garba Shehu has described media reports of a fight between the Chief of Staff to the President, Abba Kyari and the Head of Service of the Federation, Mrs. Winifred Oyo-Ita at the State House as fabrications that could only have been conjured by correspondents who would probably make better fiction writers than journalists.

Mr. Garba Shehu

Shehu said that it was impossible for the conversation between Kyari, and Oyo-Ita to have been heard by any journalist, as 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.

“By tradition, the media organizations 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. 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.”

“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.”