The management of online newspaper, SaharaReporters has said that it is ready to meet the Presidency in court over its publication which miffed the Office of the President.
Special Adviser to President Jonathan on New Media, Reno Omokri and Presidential Spokesperson, Reuben Abati had both called Sahara Reporters reportage on the President’s birthday party as irresponsible and false. They threatened that the online publication was not beyond the realm of a libel suit.
The statement from the Presidency said, “As unregulated as they are, SaharaReporters and their ilk are not beyond the bounds of legal action for libel and willful defamation of the character and reputation of a President who has courageously stepped forward to serve his country,” the statement threatened.
“They know very well that they can never substantiate or prove the constant false allegations and innuendoes they publish for the sole purpose of negatively portraying President Jonathan and his administration.
“Their incessant claim of a bibulous President is pure fiction and blackmail, and the product of malicious imagination. We warn that our forbearance of their disrespectful caricaturing of the President is not limitless.”
However in its response, Sahara Reporters said in a statement, “Despite Mr. Jonathan’s threats and deployment of scare tactics, SaharaReporters stands by its account of the events in London in the past few days.
“While we have the attention of the president and the hawks in the presidency, we take this opportunity to draw their attention to the scandalous quality of Nigerian governance that SaharaReporters and most of the Nigerian media have been reporting for many years, of which his government forms only a part.
“As the 2015 election approaches and Mr. Jonathan tries to invite the sympathy of Nigerians in his favor, we challenge him to prove— including in a court of law—that these reports have been “entirely fictional, malicious, hate-driven and scurrilous distortion of the facts.”