President Muhammadu Buhari’s daughter Hadiza Buhari, not Zahra was employed at the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA), a whistleblower told SIGNAL on Tuesday.
On Monday, a whistleblower had contacted SIGNAL with the following details; “We are dying in silence and nobody to listen to us. I am a contract staff of PPPRA and have worked for a good 7 years with promise of giving us permanent employment. The Executive Secretary Abdulkadir Umar Saidu was redeployed from NNPC to PPPRA. He came and sent all 34 of us away, saying that when the agency wants to carry out employment we will be the first to be considered. But secret employment was just carried out last Nov/Dec and 98% are Hausa/Fulani. They shared slots to senators so they won’t listen to us. Even Buhari’s daughter was employed and given a senior staff position as Deputy Manager. Her name is Zahra. She graduated and had her Masters in 2018. I have a family and my aged parents to take care of. What is our crime? Where are the jobs in this country? I just feel like dying honestly. Just crying everyday.”
However, on Tuesday, the whistleblower clarified the information on the identity of President Buhari’s daughter who was employed as Assistant Manager at the agency. She is Hadiza Buhari, another daughter of the President.
Hadiza’s photograph is contained in a PPPRA staff brochure seen by SIGNAL (below). The brochure was released at a PPPRA induction training held at Reiz Continental Hotel, Abuja between 16th-20th December, 2019.
Aliyu Abdullahi, Special Assistant to the President on Media & Publicity (Office of the First Lady) also debunked the whistleblower’s claims that it was Zahra Buhari who was employed at the agency. “It is totally untrue. Zahra is not a staff of that agency or any other Government agency for that matter”, he wrote in a statement sent to SIGNAL.
The Nigerian Presidency which rushed to deny the whistleblower’s initial claims has now maintained silence on the updated information about President Buhari’s daughter, Hadiza who works at the PPPRA.
SIGNAL gathered that the affected contract staff who were denied employment after working for seven years had petitioned the Nigerian Senate Committee on Up Stream Petroleum Sector which has oversight on petroleum matters but the committee members are uninterested in hearing their appeal as they were offered employment slots at the PPPRA.
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