Amina Zakari is Lying About her Relationship with Buhari

By Farooq Kperogi

Mrs. Amina Zakari just said to the BBC, “I’m not [Buhari’s] niece.” That’s flat-out mendacious. And it puts a huge question mark on her honesty, probity, and trustworthiness. A person who can lie this casually about something as basic and as verifiable as her relationships is disreputable and unworthy of the responsibility she's been entrusted with at INEC. So what is the truth?

In a December 27, 2018 article, Mohammed Haruna, former Daily Trust columnist and current INEC commissioner, confirmed that President Muhammadu Buhari’s biological sister was once married to Mrs. Amina Zakari’s father. That makes Amina Buhari’s niece. This is the definition of a niece in the Oxford English Dictionary: “A daughter of one's brother or sister, or of one's brother-in-law or sister-in-law.” Amina’s father was Buhari’s brother-in-law. So Amina IS INDEED Buhari’s niece.

But that’s not all. At some point in his youth, Buhari, who lost his father at a young age, came under the guardianship of Amina’s father, the late Alhaji Hussaini Adamu, who was emir of Kazaure, Daura's "next-door neighbor." I had the pleasure of interviewing Mrs.
Amina Zakari’s brother, Alhaji Najib Hussaini Adamu, in early 1999 shortly after he became emir, when I was a reporter for the Weekly Trust. I stayed at the palace for days. So I have some familiarity with the family.

Buhari has never severed his relationship with Amina’s father’s family even after Buhari’s sister's death. When he was chairman of PTF, he got Amina a consultancy contract with Afri-Projects Consortium (APC), “the sole manager of the PTF projects.” In Ray Ekpu’s widely shared June 2018 article titled “Petroleum Trust Fraud,” we learn that the late Salihijo Ahmad, the Adamawa-born boss of APC, “admitted to Newswatch in an interview published by the magazine in its April 19, 1999 issue that it was APC that wrote the proposal which defined the mandate of the PTF.”

It has also been established by several people I spoke with today that Amina Zakari was nominated to INEC commissionership by Buhari. This fact, as I pointed out in my Saturday Tribune column, isn’t enough to vitiate her neutrality. After all, Jonathan defeated Buhari in 2011 while she was INEC commissioner. But deceiving the world by concealing the nature and depth of her relationship with Buhari shows that she’s up to no good this time around.

Another evidence of Buhari’s continuing relationship with Amina’s family exists in the fact that Mrs. Amina Zakari’s biological brother, Alhaji Sulaiman Adamu, is Buhari’s Minister of Water Resources. In both African and Western kinship dynamics, Buhari and Amina Zakari are related. If Nigeria were a functioning country, Amina would have recused herself from her current role at INEC in view of the widespread concerns raised by several stakeholders about her ties with Buhari. But Nigeria is an anything-goes banana republic.
Postscript:

Also note that Amina's brother, that is, the current emir of Kazaure, whom I interviewed and interacted with in 1999, was executive secretary of PTF. Buhari gave him the job. Ambassador Kazaure, Buhari's Chief of Protocol, is also a relative of Amina's. Finally, as most people know by now, Amina's mother is from Daura, Buhari's hometown. So her ties with Buhari are pretty strong.

haladadon:
please can someone explain the powers that she has in her current position in INEC.

gare:


She is in charge of the vote collated for the Presidential election

codedguy1:



The INEC chairman claim she is in charge of logistics the collation center but we all know that's a smokescreen. Why does it have to be her.

Buhari thinks he will get away with all this nonsense he wants to do. They have seen that there is no way APC will win with a free and fair elections that's why buhari refused to sign the electoral act, inec has now decided to use incidence form after denying they will not use it and now his niece Amina has been planted in the collation center of all places.

Farooq has just given a precise and detailed description of their relationship and Amina should be ashamed of herself.

Saao:
This article is more details and closer to the truth than all other articles written about her. She needs to resign without delay. We can't entrust our mandate in inec while she still serve as commissioner in inec.

wirinet:


Did you read the links or you only read the headline? I understand the article is long ang Nigerian youth are said to be lazy, but take the effort to read the article in full. You will arrive at the opposite conclusion.

wirinet:


Did you read the links or you only read the headline? I understand the article is long ang Nigerian youth are said to be lazy, but take the effort to read the article in full. You will arrive at the opposite conclusion.

haladadon:
please can someone explain the powers that she has in her current position in INEC.

micolaj:

Opposite conclusion?
Why did you say that?
I read the article, and all I got is that by some measure that woman is related to Buhari.

And I as well subscribe to her resigning from that position. Better still, Buhari should transfer her to another ministry.

It’s also true that Buhari’s sister was once married to Mrs. Zakari’s father. But this was over 60 years ago before Mrs. Zakari was born. Besides, the marriage was short-lived and did not produce a child.

Mrs. Zakari as the best graduating student of her class with a second class upper in Pharmacy from Ahmadu Bello University in 1980. Before ABU, Mrs. Zakari had finished her secondary education as one of the best students from the once prestigious Queen’s College, Lagos.

Mrs. Zakari was Secretary, first of Health and Human Services and then of Social Services.

Mrs. Zakari was first appointed a member of the Commission, not by President Buhari, but by President Goodluck Jonathan.

wirinet:


Since you are having difficulty reading or comprehending or both, I will take the time to quote excepts and explain in in simplier terms.


From the article, Amina Zakaki was not alive the time her father married married buhari's sister, meaning she was never a step daughter- step mother relationship.



From the article we can see that Mrs Amina Zakari is more than qualified for the job.

Saao:
maybe u read it and couldn't comprehend but I read it and my comment was based on what I read.
Again be reminded that Nigerians youths are not lazy but hardworking because we survived through education, jobs, etc without government help.

wirinet:


Since you are having difficulty reading or comprehending or both, I will take the time to quote excepts and explain in in simplier terms.


From the article, Amina Zakaki was not alive the time her father married married buhari's sister, meaning she was never a step daughter- step mother relationship.



From the article we can see that Mrs Amina Zakari is more than qualified for the job.

Peacemaker5128:

Is Amina zakary also from Sudan
Ayam confused

Foolishbuhari:


Trying to play the ostrich as usual abi Lol. [b]Nobody said buhari was from Sudan [/b]they were insinuating his body double is jubril from Sudan. Even though I never did consider the narrative as important. Such assertions never win elections

Foolishbuhari:


Trying to play the ostrich as usual abi Lol. [b]Nobody said buhari was from Sudan [/b]they were insinuating his body double is jubril from Sudan. Even though I never did consider the narrative as important. Such assertions never win elections