Many Nigerians berated President Muhammadu Buhari when he publicly revealed he was unaware Inspector-General of Police Ibrahim Idris had flouted his order to relocate to Benue State at a time herdsmen were on rampage.

But it appears presidential ignorance about major cabinet happenings is not peculiar to Nigeria: a brief recording made public on Monday by NBC has shown that President Donald Trump was unaware of former White House staffer and TV celebrity Omarosa Manigault Newman’s sacking in December 2017.


Omarosa, the former ‘Apprentice’ contestant who became a White House aide, was one of Trump’s loyalists, but she has now turned round to say Trump, "doesn’t even know what’s happening in his White House”.

NBC’s ‘Today’ programme played a brief recording, released by Newman, of a private conversation with President Donald Trump after she was fired.

In it, Trump claimed to be oblivious of her dismissal by Chief of Staff, John Kelly, and expressed regrets at the news.

“Omarosa? Omarosa what’s going on? I just saw on the news that you’re thinking about leaving? What happened?” Trump had said, apparently unaware she had already been fired.

“General Kelly — General Kelly came to me and said that you guys wanted me to leave,” Omarosa replied. “No… I. I — Nobody even told me about it,” Trump is heard saying. “You know they run a big operation, but I didn’t know it. I didn’t know that. Goddamn it. I don’t love you leaving at all.”

Trump responded to the revelation in typically vitriolic fashion, branding Omarosa “wacky” and a “lowlife”.

“Wacky Omarosa, who got fired 3 times on the Apprentice, now got fired for the last time. She never made it, never will. She begged me for a job, tears in her eyes, I said Ok. People in the White House hated her. She was vicious, but not smart. I would rarely see her but heard really bad things,” he wrote on Twitter.

“Nasty to people & would constantly miss meetings & work. When Gen. Kelly came on board he told me she was a loser & nothing but problems. I told him to try working it out, if possible, because she only said GREAT things about me - until she got fired!

“While I know it’s ‘not presidential’ to take on a lowlife like Omarosa, and while I would rather not be doing so, this is a modern day form of communication and I know the Fake News Media will be working overtime to make even Wacky Omarosa look legitimate as possible. Sorry!