outrage as Buhari allegedly appoints Bashir Ahmed manager of lucrative petroleum ministry department

President Muhammadu Buhari has appointed his media aide Bashir Ahmad to manage a lucrative division at the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) – according to a report on Peoples Gazette over the weekend.

29-year-old Bashir Ahmed was said to have been appointed to manage the newly-established National Production Monitoring System (NPMS) and agency under DPR.

The NPMS has the mandate of providing an online platform to accurately monitor national crude oil production and exports, through the provision of a system for direct and independent acquisition of production data from oil and gas facilities in Nigeria, to ensure timely and accurate reporting of production figures and export data. It replaces the current paper-based report. NPMS ensures ready production reporting to FIRS, NEITI, and other Agencies.

The Gazette, quoting a State House official reported “Bashir got the appointment early January, but his documentation took place last week.”

However, Bashir reacting to the report on Twitter said the story is 100% false.

“A friend sent me a link to a concocted story from an online news blog that the President has quietly appointed me as a manager of the DPR, a department of Ministry of Petroleum Resources, for those who want to know the truth, the story is 100% FALSE. I am not a staff of the DPR,” he wrote on his verified Twitter handle.

A friend sent me a link to a concocted story from an online news blog that the President has quietly appointed me as a manager of the DPR, a department of Ministry of Petroleum Resources, for those who want to know the truth, the story is 100% FALSE. I am not a staff of the DPR.

— Bashir Ahmad (@BashirAhmaad) February 15, 2021

This is not the first controversial report from the Gazette, last week the online publication published a story on how the president had quietly appointed one of his aides and nephew, Sabiu “Tunde” Yusuf, to the position of an assistant director at the National Intelligence Agency (NIA).

Both stories the publication claim is to expose a pattern of nepotism and tribal sentiments in federal appointments under the Buhari regime.