President under fire for 'stealing' Obama's 2008 speech (Video)

dimeji akinloye

September 17, 2016 11:42 AM

The Presidency had blamed the reckless incident on an "ambitious" staff, saying the matter would be investigated and the offender punished accordingly.

Nigerians on Twitter have condemned President

Presidential spokesman, Garba Shehu, had on Friday, September 16, admitted that the paragraph nine of Buhari's speech at the 'Change Begins With Me' campaign launch was a 'copy and paste' of Obama's 2008 speech.

He blamed the reckless insertion on the error of an ambitious staff in the Presidency, saying the matter would be investigated and the offender punished accordingly.

Al though, multiple sources say, the erred staff has been identified and sacked.

Nonetheless, Nigerians have continued to mock the President, describing the incident as embarrassing and hypocritical of the leader demanding 'Change' from his followers.

With the harsh tag #TheStolenSpeech, which is currently trending on the microblogging site Twitter, some said the Presidency did not take responsibility until BBC reported the plagiarism story.

ALSO READ: Part of Buhari's 'Change Begins With Me' speech is stolen from Obama 2008 victory speech

It also emerged that Buhari's popular quote from his 2015 inauguration speech - "I belong to everybody and I belong to nobody" was copied from Charles de Gaulle's 1958 speech.

Charles de Gaulle was a French army officer and statesman. He was the leader of Free France and the head of the Provisional Government of the French Republic.

See some of the Twitter reactions below:

dimeji akinloye