President-elect Bola Tinubu has denied arranging a clandestine meeting with the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Kayode Ariwoola in London as reported in a section of the Nigerian media.
Director, Media and Publicity of APC Presidential Campaign Council, Bayo Onanuga spoke in a statement on Thursday.
Online news platform Peoples Gazette quoted unnamed Supreme Court sources as sighting Ariwoola pretending to be a physically-challenged old man in clandestine preparation for a meeting with Tinubu.
The platform said it learnt that the CJN departed Nigeria on March 11 via Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, and was pushed in a wheelchair through the terminals to board a British Airways flight.
“The CJN deliberately left the country more than a week ahead of Tinubu to avoid any suspicion about why both of them disappeared at once.
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“That is why he travelled secretly and Tinubu also travelled secretly,” Gazette quoted a source as saying.
In his statement, Onanuga described the report as a “grossly fake, misleading and malicious story”.
“The story was a pure concoction from the hallucinating minds of hatchet men bent on creating doubts and public distrust about the legitimacy of our recent election, which was won by Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
“We refute emphatically that there has been no clandestine meeting between the President-elect and the respected Chief Justice of our country, any where. It’s pure fabricated news, groundless in fact and authenticity.
“To show that the story was a mere salacious fiction, meant to draw traffic to the discredited purveyor, it claimed the Chief Justice left Nigeria for London on 11 March, on a wheelchair to board a plane.
“The President elect left Nigeria on 21 March, 10 clear days thereafter. What kind of appointment or secret meeting will the two men have arranged in London, with so wide disparate arrival dates, except in the imagination of the false news merchants?” the statement read in part.
Onanuga said that President-elect Tinubu has not been in London.
“He is right now in France to have a deserved rest, after a hectic campaign that began in January 2022.
“He will go to London thereafter before proceeding to Mecca for the lesser Hajj.
“As we move towards inauguration on 29 May, 2023, Nigerians should expect more false and salacious news from a section of the Nigerian media, on the payroll of the opposition.
“We urge the media once again to cross check their information from the President-elect media office before rushing to press,” Onanuga’s statement further read.