RE: £250 MILLION GIVEN BY BRITAIN TO THE NIGERIAN PRESIDENT WITH FIVE HOMES WHO SENDS DAUGHTER TO A £26,000-A-YEAR ENGLISH SCHOOL

Dear Editor,

Kindly grant me some space in your widely respected newspaper to express my disappointment over a story published on your website titled, "£250 million given by Britain to the Nigerian president with five homes who sends daughter to a £26,000-a-year English school".

This article is wrong on so many levels, and what's more disturbing is the level of nonchalance in the editing of the article. Anyone who knows Nigeria even for a short period would pick up these dangerously misleading points:

1) A misleading headline: Why say "£250 million given by Britain to the Nigerian president..."? I thought aid is given to people, not a single person.

Besides, I've been working in the development sector for at least seven years, and I've never heard of a donor country giving money directly to any government. The aid is mostly in kind, which directly employs the citizens of the donor country first.

Even if the UK actually gives Nigeria £250 million cash (which is almost impossible!), don't you think Nigeria deserves it, given the long-standing history between the two countries?

2) The article mentions how the Nigerian president spends £150,000 to educate his daughter at University of Surrey. However, even the laziest of editors can verify this claim by simply visiting the university's website. And I just did! And guess what I found…

For foreign students, the tuition fees for University of Surrey is between £14,000 and £17,000, depending on course of study. I guess the article is talking about the tuition only since no one can possibly know how much the president’s daughter’s pocket money is, unless we want to concoct another lie.

How then did the Nigerian President spend £150,000 to educate his daughter? Did she study there for 10 years?!

3) You mentioned something about his daughter studying in a "£26,000-a-year English school", but you were short of mentioning which of the daughters and which university.

You see, unfortunately for lazy journalists, journalism is today beyond slapping some numbers in an article and expecting readers to fall for it hook, line and sinker. Anyone can spot a shoddy work in a jiffy!

4) The article also made another misleading point about the president's assets, and I quote: "...even his partial admission included more than £1 million in the bank, five houses and two plots of land." This is a blatant and shameless lie.

The Nigerian president declared his total asset at 30 million Naira, which is about £100,000 at current official exchange rate. How is that anywhere near a million pounds?!

And for your information, he has only two houses in the whole wide world: one in Kaduna and the other in his home town of Daura. And it’s common knowledge in Nigeria that he borrowed to build both houses – even his staunch opponents know and admit this!

Finally, I'm sure you understand my disappointment with the editorial service of Daily Mail... I hope you'll have the dignity to take this filth down.

By the way, the Nigerian President is not a "self-proclaimed people's president". He was duly elected by the majority of Nigerians, and the same people gave him the title of "the people's president"!

Thank you,

Dr. M. Aminu
(Liverpool, UK)

Dailymail not new to controversy
these are some of the succesfull lawsuits against the paper.
2001, February: Businessman Alan Sugar was awarded £100,000 in damages following a story commenting on his stewardship of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club

2003, October: Actress Diana Rigg awarded £30,000 in damages over a story commenting on aspects of her personality.

2006, May: £100,000 damages for Elton John, following false accusations concerning his manners and behaviour.

2009, January: £30,000 award to Dr Austen Ivereigh, who had worked for Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, following false accusations made by the newspaper concerning abortion.

2010, July: £47,500 award to Parameswaran Subramanyam for falsely claiming that he secretly sustained himself with hamburgers during a 23-day hunger strike in Parliament Square to draw attention to the protests against the Sri Lankan Civil War in 2009.

2011, November: the former lifestyle adviser Carole Caplin received damages over claims in the Mail that she would reveal intimate details about former clients.

2014, May: author J. K. Rowling received substantial damages and the Mail printed an apology. The newspaper had made a false claim about Rowling's story written for the website of Gingerbread, a single parents' charity.