Last year, Aisha Buhari, Wife to the Nigerian President ordered security operatives to detain a student after a defamatory tweet as confirmed by Agu Chijioke Kingsley to CNN.
The first lady went ahead to supervise his beating at the country’s presidential villa, according to a lawyer.
Aminu Mohammed Adamu, 24, was detained by police in the capital Abuja over a tweet he posted on June 8 that contained what prosecutors said were defamatory remarks about first lady, Aisha Buhari.
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A defamation lawsuit brought against Adamu by the first lady has since been dropped.
According to Kingsley, Adamu, a final year environmental management and toxicology student at a university in northern Nigeria, had been trailed by “plain-clothed security operatives” and arrested at the Federal University, Dutse, in Jigawa State on November 18.
“My client said he was arrested at school and taken to the presidential villa where he met with the first lady who told the security operatives to beat him … and he was beaten before he was detained at a police station in Abuja,” Kingsley told CNN.
A spokesperson for the Abuja police command did not comment when reached by CNN, while presidential spokesperson Garba Shehu did not return CNN’s request for comment on the allegations of assault against Adamu by the first lady.
The Nigerian first lady, Aisha Buhari, hasn’t spoken publicly about the incident.
According to his lawyer, who added he was in the process of applying for Adamu’s bail days after his arraignment when the charge was dropped by the first lady the accused pleaded not guilty.
A police commissioner in Nigeria has also called for the first lady to be prosecuted.
“She did not only have him arrested but he was also beaten and tortured in the (Presidential) Villa … This is not acceptable,” said Naja’atu Mohammed, a commissioner in the Police Service Commission (PSC), an oversight body of the Nigeria Police Force.
“There are laws governing every offense in this country, so why is she not abiding by the law? If indeed he defamed her character, she should follow due process and take him to court. Mrs. Buhari should be prosecuted for taking the law into her hands,” Mohammed told CNN.
TikTok comedians were publicly whipped and ordered to wash toilets in Northern Kano State for making a video that a court ruled had defamed the state Governor Abdullahi Umar Ganduje.
