President Muhammadu Buhari has wielded the big stick on his Presidential liaison officer, Nura Rimi, five months after his appointment for his inability to successfully coordinate his itinerary and entourage while he attended the United Nations General Assembly in the United States.
According to reports, the sack is hinged on the fact that the President missed key meetings which were not on his list due to misinformation by his team and he ought to be the meeting.
It will be recalled that there was a media backlash on the President for missing a meeting which was centered on the Boko Haram insurgency and with Nigeria at the receiving end of the insurgency, the country was not represented.
In the statement by the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, the presidency said the said meeting “was not the only one or the most important of such meetings in New York that are paying attention to the problem of insecurity, migration and violent extremism in the Lake Chad area and the rest of the world”.
“This notwithstanding, it must be realized that it will be near impossible for any national delegation, no matter its size, to participate in all the meetings that are simultaneously happening in and around the General Assembly in New York.
“The meeting at which Nigeria was reportedly absent was not one of the official events of the United Nations for which President Muhammadu Buhari and his modest delegation are in New York.
The United States and the European Union diplomats were disappointed that Nigeria did not attend the event chaired by U.N. aid chief Stephen O’Brien on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.
Rimi coordinated Buhari’s itinerary, entourage and facilitated most of the meetings that President Buhari attended in the sidelines of the UNGA.
The feeling in the presidency is that Rimi failed to effectively communicate with the president’s team and must be punished.
Rimi, who served as President Goodluck Jonathan’s Chief Protocol Officer was posted to Nigeria Embassy in Abu Dhabi shortly before the presidential election.
He was recalled by Buhari, who appointed him as his PLO before his inauguration.
Rimi is a career civil servant who had served in Nigeria’s embassy in the US before he was posted to the presidential Villa as a Protocol officer where he served both former Presidents Umaru Yar’Adua and Jonathan.