SaharaReporters' Story On Tinubu Malicious - Lawyer

A human rights lawyer and activist, Olatunji Abayomi, has demanded a retraction of a report against the National Leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Asiwaju Bola Tinubu by an online journal, SaharaReporters titled: “Threat of perjury trial: How Jonathan Blackmailed Bola Tinubu before 2011 Presidential election”. In his letter, Abayomi argued that the report is not only false, but defamatory.

“We demand a statement acknowledging your error of trying to damage our client’s reputation as well as a statement regretting the same.

“Please this matter must be attended to immediately otherwise you run the risk of multiple civil suits all over the world in defence of our client," Abayomi wrote.

The lawyer said the report attempted to defame Tinubu’s reputation by spreading old, utterly false gossip in hope of wrongly destroying his prospects. SaharaReporters, he said, failed to inquire diligently about Tinubu’s educational records to know that he was an award-winning alumnus of the Chicago State University. Also, there was no charge at the Federal High Court numbered FHC/ABJ/CR/04/2011, nor was Tinubu tried or convicted.

Besides, Abayomi noted that the United States Embassy, in its February 4, 2003 response to an inquiry by the Inspector-General of Police, stated that there is “no criminal arrest, records, wants or warrants for Bola Ahmed Tinubu.” 

“If you had checked readily available records, you would have found that he travels periodically to the United States. Had he been engaged in criminal wrongdoing, he would have been ineligible for entry into that country,” Abayomi wrote.

Abayomi also recalled that the Code of Conduct charge against Tinubu was dismissed. “SaharaReporters appears to have surrendered itself to propagate old allegations to serve the same old failing antagonists who can find no serious grounds beyond their noisy interests,” the lawyer added.

Credit: Vanguard