19th October, 2015
Okafor Ofiebor/Port Harcourt
Rt. Hon. Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, former governor of Rivers State has denied reports by a section of the media that he was angry over the deferment of his screening last week and stormed the residence of the Senate President Bukola Saraki in anger.
In an online statement signed by David Iyofor, Amaechi’s former Chief Press, dismissed the report that he, a ministerial nominee whose screening by the Senate had been deferred, was said to have raised his voice to express his frustration before leaving the residence without seeing the Senate President.
The statement said the imagery created in the last four paragraphs of the lead report in today’s edition of the national daily, (THISDAY) depicted an angry Amaechi who stormed the residence of the Senate President Bukola Saraki, raised his voice as he made a scene or caused a “ruckus” to display his frustration over the deferment of his screening by the Senate, before “storming out in a huff”, without seeing the Senate President is absolutely not true.
The statement further said:”There is a deliberate and carefully calibrated attempt to characterize Amaechi with a very bad and demeaning mannerism. We must clarify that Rt. Hon. Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi did not visit and was not at the residence of the Senate President on Thursday of last week. Since he did not go to the residence of the Senate President on Thursday of last week, so, there is absolutely no way what the newspaper sources claimed to have transpired, happened.
“We must emphasize that former Governor Amaechi holds the office of the President of the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in very high esteem and will never disrespect or act in anyway that would put the office in disrepute. However, in this case, the incident reported never occurred either on Thursday or any other day.
“While we understand the constraints and pressures journalists face in doing their jobs, we would advise them to be thorough and double-check or even triple-check their sources of information. There seems to exist an axis of fifth columnists, masquerading as ‘sources’ to journalists, but fabricate events, incidences and stories that never happened to malign and destroy the character and reputation of others, while fomenting acrimony and bad blood in the polity. Journalists must beware of such ‘sources’,”Amaechi’s media aide said.