Goodluck Jonathan on Public Affairs, Dr. Doyin
Okupe, has denied equating his principal with the
late former President of South Africa, Dr.
Nelson Mandela.
Head of Media in Okupe's office, Mr. Bamidele
Salam, said in a statement that the claim credited
to Okupe was an invention by some individuals
whose motive, he said, was to mislead innocent
users of the social media.
"I check (sic) through the history of Nigeria
among our past and present leaders, the only one
we can call our Mandela is President Jonathan.
There is no President in Nigeria that has
sacrificed 13 hours to discuss with ASUU,"
Okupe allegedly said in the statement that had
gone viral on the social media.
While giving a background to this statement
purportedly likening President Jonathan to the
former South African President, Okupe said the
AIT programme where he allegedly made the
statement was recorded at about 5pm on
Thursday, November 5, whereas the death of the
South African leader was announced almost four
hours later.
He, therefore, wondered how he could have
spoken about a living Mandela as if he were dead
and then compared him with any other person.
"It is clear that the authors of these false
quotes are linked by the same desire to mislead
innocent members through a consistent pattern
of published falsehood in a manner as to portray
Okupe as an enemy of adherents of a particular
faith, geo-political zone or some other noble
causes in the polity," Salam's statement read in
part.
Salam said it was unfortunate that many online
commentators believed what he described as
false publication and continued to make
disparaging comments in response to the untrue
posting.
He also alleged that a group, known as Arewa
Vanguard, had also lied by quoting Okupe as
saying at a press conference that the ongoing
strike by the members of the Academic Staff
Union of Universities was being sponsored by a
former Head of State, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari
(retd.) and a former Governor of Lagos State,
Bola Tinubu.
He said the statement was obviously from the
imagination of the author who, he said, had misled
a number of people into making invidious remarks
about the Presidential aide, whose statements
about the ASUU strike, according to him, are
always signed and presented to the media.
Culled from punch
Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone provided by Airtel Nigeria.
No comments:
Post a Comment