Dr. Doyin Okupe
Chuks Okocha
Senior Special Assistant to the President on Public Affairs, Dr. Doyin Okupe, yesterday restated his innocence on the controversy over the contract involving him and his company in Benue State, accusing the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) of propagating falsehood.
In a statement signed by the Director of Media, Office of the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Public Affairs, Olusanya Awosan, Okupe said, “Firstly, these companies are duly registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission with the full complement of other Directors including foreign nationals apart from Okupe.”
The statement further said legally speaking, “Okupe is an individual with an identity separate from the corporate identities of these two companies.”
Accordingly, he said the persistent publications are “full of outright falsehood and fabrications politically-motivated out of desperation by the ACN members who feel that their overwhelming domination of the media which they have deployed for two years to malign and disparage the personality and programmes of President Goodluck Jonathan, is about to come to an end.
“The ACN through Alhaji Lai Mohammed deliberately converted purely commercial and civil transactions guided by legal agreements containing lawful procedures for dispute resolution and redress jointly agreed to by the parties concerned into criminal accusations which is intended for political exploitations,” the statement said.
The statement also said, “Therefore Okupe is under a moral obligation to the Nigerian public to clear his name and set the records straight.
“He will in a few days address the Nigerian news media and the Nigerian public with facts and figures exonerating him from any criminal culpability in the said transactions in order to expose the wicked and malicious intentions of Alhaji Lai Mohammed and his cohorts ,who have a penchant and an agenda for pulling down any upcoming personality of Yoruba descent who do not belong to their political cabal or subscribe to their political aspirations,” he said.