Buhari

President Muhammadu Buhari has ordered that prompt and appropriate disciplinary action be taken against those responsible for a wrongful insertion in his speech delivered on September 8, 2016 at the launch of the “Change Begins with Me’’ campaign, Garba Shehu, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity said on Friday.

A report in a national newspaper on Friday morning had indicated that some of the paragraphs contained in the speech delivered at the National Reorientation campaign were lifted from the speech delivered by President Barrack Obama after his election in the United States’ presidential poll in 2008.

The Presidency agreed that there were similarities in the speeches, promising to punish the culprit in the statement released on Friday evening.

“It was observed that the similarities between a paragraph in President Obama’s 2008 Victory Speech and what President Buhari read in paragraph nine of the sixteen-paragraph address while inaugurating the Campaign on Thursday, September 8, 2016 are too close to be passed as coincidence.

“There was a mistake by an overzealous staff and we regret that this has happened.

“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 urges Nigerians to look beyond this incident and focus on the message of change which the country needs in order to restore our cherished value systems, he concluded in the statement.