Presidency Sacks 35 Osinbajo’s Aides

The Presidency on Tuesday night fired 35 aides of Vice President Yemi Osinbajo.

A news medium, Daily Nigerian, had reported wednesrday that the president, who is currently in London on a private visit, sacked 35 of the vice president’s 80 aides.

Hours later, an online medium, TheCable, lent credence to the story, saying it had confirmed its authenticity from some senior presidential aides.

However, as at the time of filing this report, there was no official confirmation of the report or otherwise.

A top presidential aide contacted by THISDAY over the matter, declined comment.

However, THISDAY learnt that the story was true.

Some individuals privy to the information, said the vice president hopes that the trend will be reversed when the president returns from London.

It was learnt that the sacked aides, whose Presidential Villa tags had been retrieved, were sent out of the seat of power in a bid to reduce Osinbajo’s perceived high number of aides.

But a good number of others were of the belief that the sack was political and was only a part of the measures to render Osinbajo irrelevant.

The past one month has not been the best of times for Osinbajo as a number of privileges he enjoyed in the first term of Buhari’s administration have been withdrawn.

For instance, the president who at different times went on vacation for 10 days in his first term, had voluntarily handed power to his deputy, who accordingly discharged the functions of his office, is currently away for 15 days without dignifying him with such honour.

Earlier, the president had moved the Social Investment Programme of the administration to the newly created Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Investment.

Buhari had also replaced the Economic Management Team chaired by Osinbajo with Economic Advisory Council led by Prof. Doyin Salami which reports directly to him.

Analysts believe these seem to show that these are not the best of times for the vice president.