The claim by a former Governor of Abia State, Senator Orji Uzor Kalu, that President Muhammadu Buhari does not own a house in Abuja is not true, The PUNCH reports.
Kalu, who is the Chief Whip of the Senate, had, while addressing journalists on Saturday, said, “I have known him (Buhari) now for 32 years; he and former military President (Ibrahim) Babangida.
“He has not changed. Think of it… a man that ruled Nigeria as military head of state and has no house in Abuja or Lagos. He does not have a house in Port Harcourt or Ibadan.
“If you go to his house in Daura, it is the same house, the same small house he built long ago.
“The television I saw there when I went there last year for Sallah – that television must have been bought in 1973.”
However, checks by The PUNCH show that Kalu’s claims are not completely true, as the President has five properties located variously in Kaduna, Katsina, Kano, Port Harcourt and Abuja.
In a statement signed by the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, on September 3, 2015, the Presidency gave some details of what Buhari declared in his asset declaration form which was submitted to the Code of Conduct Bureau.
The statement reads in part, “The (CCB) documents also revealed that President Buhari had a total of five homes, and two mud houses in Daura.
“He had two homes in Kaduna, one each in Kano, Daura (Katsina State) and in Abuja “One of the mud houses in Daura was inherited from his late older sister, another from his late father.
“He borrowed money from the old Barclays Bank to build two of his homes.
“President Buhari also has two undeveloped plots of land, one in Kano and the other in Port Harcourt. He is still trying to trace the location of the Port Harcourt land.
“In addition to the homes in Daura, he has farms, an orchard and a ranch.
“The total number of his holdings in the farm include 270 heads of cattle, 25 sheep, five horses, a variety of birds and a number of economic trees.
“The documents also showed that the retired General uses a number of cars, two of which he bought from his savings and the others supplied to him by the Federal Government in his capacity as former Head of State.
“The rest were donated to him by well-wishers after his jeep was damaged in a Boko Haram bomb attack on his convoy in July 2014.”