President Muhammadu Buhari has ordered that appropriate disciplinary action be taken against those responsible for a wrongful insertion in his speech delivered at the recent launch of the ‘Change Begins with Me’ campaign.
A newspaper columnist had yesterday drawn attention to the similarity of a sentence in the Buhari speech with a paragraph in US President Barack Obama’s 2008 Victory speech.
The President’s Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu,admitted yesterday that the similarity was too striking to be dismissed as a coincidence.
“There was a mistake by an overzealous staff and we regret that this has happened,” Shehu said in a statement.
“Already, a Deputy Director in the Presidency has accepted responsibility for the insertion of the contentious paragraph.
“This serious oversight will be investigated thoroughly and appropriate sanction meted.
“The Presidency wishes to state in the clearest possible terms that it regrets this unfortunate incident and will ensure that this does not happen again.”
President Buhari also urged Nigerians to look beyond the incident and focus on the message of change which the country needed to restore her cherished value systems.