By Pascal Oparada
Nigerians have reacted to what they called ‘Fake’ Martin Luther King (MLK) Award given to President Muhammadu Buhari on Monday.
The social media was inundated with stories of how Abike Dabiri-Erewa, aide to President Buhari on Diaspora Affairs, deceived him into accepting the award as given by the King Centre.
Oby Ezekwesili on her twitter handle expressed surprise as to how the President would allow himself to be hoodwinked into accepting such award.
“Wow. Everyday calamity? This is way beyond embarrassing. I mean, how can we even allow things like this to happen to our country? This level of Praise Hunting disgraces the entire country not just those involved. How could this even be allowed to happen?”, Ezekwesili tweeted.
Social affairs analyst, Pius Adesanmi, wrote on his twitter page, in retweet, quoting the King Centre said: “Integrity way: admit error, apologize to Nigerians & d King Centre, fire a lot of people, especially Lauretta Onochie.
Your way: arrogance. Behave like it never happened. Party your heart out in Lagos. Encourage ur aides to use ogboju. Joke about it at d next Council of State.”
Dotun Olusu posted on his Facebook and expressed shock at what he termed naivete of the president.
”It has become a fact the president is really never aware of the things – good, bad and ugly – that happen around him.
“An award arranged by the president’s special assistant on Diaspora and a certain Ghana-based African-American, Erika Faye Bennet, who was introduced as Ambassador Erika Bennet in Abuja during the event. Ms. Bennet founded and runs an NGO called the Diaspora African Forum [DAF], where she has given herself the designation Ambassador-at-Large.
“With funding from the presidency through Hon. Abike Dabiri, Erika Bennet planned an award for the president but masked the award as the Black History Month Award for Excellence in Leadership. Erika Bennet contacted her friend Barbara King who is not a member of Martin Luther King’s immediate family, to pose ”matriarch” of the MLK family. In fact to further embellish the lie, Mrs. Lauretta Onochie, the president’s assistant on new media described Mrs. Barbara King as the ”wife of Martin Luther King.
In a phone conversation with the author, The King Centre and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference have all distanced themselves from the Award.
So, I can reliably submit that the First Black History Month National Black Excellence and Exceptional African Leadership Award 2018 presented to our ”dear” president is a big fraud”, Olusu said.
The King Centre in a response to an inquiry distanced itself from the purported award.
“The award given to President Buhari of Nigeria was not given by the Centre, at the request of the King Centre or by the Children of #MLK and #CorrettaScottKing. @MrFixNigeria”, the centre tweeted.
In a statement released Thursday, Erewa responded to the Centre’s disclaimer and the outrage by Nigerians she said the award was not given by King Centre.
Her media aide, Abdurrahman Balogun, explained the issues as follows:
“Our attention has been drawn to obviously fake on line news reports on the visit of some members of the MLK family to Nigeria.
“The members, led by the Matriarch of MLK, Naomi Barbara King, were in Nigeria as part of the activities initiated to celebrate a low- key Black History Month in Nigeria as part of deepening partnership between Africa and its Diaspora.
” As part of the activities, they visited President Muhammadu Buhari and gave him a commemorative plaque for his fight against corruption and what they termed from the “ Africania Diaspora” a term for Africans in Diaspora for which the oldest of them all Naomi Barbara King was selected to present on behalf of the family (NOT MLK CENTER) as a sign of appreciation to the Nigerian President.
It must be categorically stated here that the trip was totally privately funded and not one kobo was spent by the Nigerian government as it was all a private initiative.
However, after two days in Nigeria, one of the members apparently granted an interview which was seen as being political , asking Nigerians to give President Muhammadu Buhari a chance to continue his good works especially of fighting corruption in Nigeria.
As a non political group , he was asked to refute the statement , which he refused to , insisting that was how he felt , and it was his personal opinion, not that of the family nor the centre, of which he is a board member and was the Chief Operating Officer for over five years.
This may have led to some arguments among them , which they have said they will resolve when they get back to the US., which apparently led to the tweet being circulated
The visit to Nigeria was quite successful that they extended their stay for two major days, surprised at the negative reports on Nigeria.
Members of the public are hereby urged to please discountenance any fake news about the visit and avoid the temptation of destroying all the good things for the sake of Politics. as the administration marches on in the fight against against corruption.
Signed.
Abdurrahman Balogun
S.A. Media to Hon. Abike Dabiri-Erewa
SSA to the President on Foreign And Diaspora.
