Five stunning facts about President Buhari's PA on New Media

News broke on Thursday, February 11, 2016 that President Muhammadu Buhari had appointed Bashir Ahmad as his special assistant on New Media.

The appointment, although unconfirmed by the presidency, was announced on Ahmad’s twitter handle, where he wrote how pleased he was to have bagged the new post with the presidency.

Commendations have since gone the way of Mr president, whom many Nigerians hailed for ensuring the active participation of youths in governance in the country as against initial claims in some quarters that he only had former allies and oldies as his appointees.

Here are 5 stunning facts about the young man who is to oversee the president’s online communication.


1. He is ‘just’ 24 years old.

Unlike most of President Buhari’s previous appointees, Ahmad is rather young and his appointment looks like a fulfillment of the Nigerian number one man’s promise of active involvement of youths in his administration.

2. Ahmad is a native of Kano state

Like most of the previous appointments made by the president, Ahmad is a northerner, a situation which many commentators were not pleased with because they believe he (Buhari) should at the south southerners for his next appointment.

This is because most of the president’s previous appointees came from the northern states, an act which made many Nigerians accuse him of being a tribalist.

3. Mr Ahmad graduated from Bayero University Kano in 2013, with Bachelor of Arts in Mass Communication.

Upon graduating from school, the young man worked as an online editor and reporter at Rariya Hausa Newspaper before leaving to join Leadership as an online editor where he was the Hausa editor prior to this appointment by President Buhari.

4. Worked with Buhari’s counterpart in the APC for the presidential primaries

Mr Ahmad was the personal assistant on new media to Sam Nda-Isaiah, the publisher of Leadership, who contested alongside  Mr. Buhari for the All Progressives Congress, APC’s presidential ticket for the 2015 election.

5. He was moved to Buhari Support Organization (BSO)

Either as a way of compensating him for his boss’s loss at the primaries or as a way of putting ‘all hands on deck’, Ahmad was moved to the Buhari Support Organisation’s media team ahead of the presidential polls.

His new job description is to oversee President Buhari’s communication on social media and related platforms.