Renowned newspaper columnist and political activist, Akin
Osuntokun, has reacted on allegation by the Presidency, on Thursday accusing
him of spreading lies about a false Sallah day bomb blast due to his purported
hatred for President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration, insisting that
Presidency lied to Nigerians, reports ITREALMS.
A press statement sighted by ITREALMS on Friday, Mr. Osuntokun, denied
any complacency over the report on bomb blast, but attributed an international
news agency Reuters as the source, maintaining that the Presidency lied to
Nigeria while describing Presidential Spokesman Femi Adesina, as “purveyors of
lies.”
Part of the statement read: “The irony of the statement from
the presidency calling me a liar started with a lie against me: ‘Akin Osuntokun
made the false claim that a bomb blast had gone off earlier in the day’.
“I had called the Channels Television to confirm the
veracity of this scandalous attribution. Of course, it was an outright fiction
conjured by the Presidential Spokesman to embellish his narrative of a
fundamental slander of the Buhari government. There was nowhere in the
television discussion I spoke of a bomb blast.
“Wedded to this lie, Mr Adesina went on to crow that Sallah
day had passed quietly and peacefully without even a firecracker going off, let
alone bomb blast’. Yet according to Reuters report, 63 people were reportedly
killed and villages burnt in terrorist attack in Maimalari village in Borno
State the previous day. This is the idea of a peaceful Sallah day the President
of Nigeria is boasting about.”
“This reaction from the Presidency is a perfect illustration
of how the incumbent Nigerian Government has trivialised and made mockery of
governance. It is consistent with the fraudulent trademark assertion two years
ago of the Minister of Information that Boko Haram has been technically
defeated.
“You will imagine that a government with so much disastrous
scorecard on security will be more modest in advertising itself on security
governance competence. You will think that it is not the same government whom a
former Army Chief of Staff accused of complicity in the genocidal Fulani
militia crisis,” he said.
Further, he said, “A couple of weeks ago, Professor Wole
Soyinka went to the extent of seeking international intervention in the face of
the abject failure of the Buhari administration to stem the tide of the
genocidal bloodletting that has enveloped the country. Billions of dollars down
the drain on supposed containment of the security crisis, you will recall that
this government has gone ahead to recently requesting for another billion
dollars to address the same security situation it claimed to have brought under
control. Domiciled in Nigeria is the escalating Fulani militia terror that the
United Nations has rated the deadliest terrorist group in the whole world.”
Ayo Midele/GEE
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