President Buhari makes another appointment, names Pastor Laolu Akande as VP, Oshinbajo's spokesman

President Buhari has made another appointment – oh wait, it’s another spokesman.

President Muhammadu Buhari has appointed Laolu Akande as senior special assistant in charge of communication for vice president Yemi Osinbajo’s office.

We hear the Presidency will maintain one media team but different people will be seconded to different personalities in the Presidency. Akande will be attached to Osinbajo.

HIS PROFILE

Akande was the North America Bureau Chief of the Guardian.

He is a pastor and a former editor of Saturday Tribune.

He reportedly moved to the United States in 1997 after agents of then dictator, Sani Abacha, began harassing him over perceived critical stance of his paper (Saturday Tribune) to the administration.

According to his brief bio on the website of the CANUSA, a Christian organization for which he works as executive director, Mr. Akande is regarded as “the longest serving African correspondent at the United Nations, and the only Nigerian journalist so far to have interviewed a sitting American president in the White House when he interviewed former President George W. Bush.

“He has also exclusively interviewed American folk hero, General Colin Powell, as well as billionaires like Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Donald Trump and several African leaders and presidents.”

An adjunct college professor, Mr. Akande worked with leading American newspapers including the Philadelphia Inquirer, and New York Newsday.

He worked briefly at the United Nations as a press officer and later as advocacy consultant between 2002 and 2004.