President-elect General Muhammadu Buhari has said that he was unaware of the directive to bar the AIT and only heard about the issue following the uproar.

In a statement today by Garba Shehu, his campaign spokesman, Buhari instructed all his staff, including the personnel attached directly to him, to steer clear of all dealings with the media, and leave all media affairs to his official media team.

The strange thing about the statement is that Garba Shehu who signed it and who is in charge of liaising with the media for the campaign was also the one who made the initial pronouncement about AIT being barred.

Hmmm…

Anyway, Buhari aligned himself with the pronouncement of his party, the All Progressives Congress, APC which had earlier expressed disagreement with the temporary barring of the African Independent Television (AIT) from covering his media affairs.

“I would like everyone to henceforth stay within his/her defined area of responsibility,” General Buhari said.

The president-elect added that his media team should be left to deal with their media colleagues as they best knew how.

According to the statement, General Buhari was neither consulted nor informed about the AIT barring, and only became aware of the matter after the public uproar it generated.

“The time of CHANGE has come,” he said, “and we must avoid making the same mistakes that the outgoing government made.”