By Deji Elumoye in Abuja
The Media Adviser to the Senate President, Mr. Yusuph Olaniyonu, has berated the Information and Culture Minister, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, for his recent utterances over the last April armed robbery attack that claimed several lives in Offa, Kwara State.
Olaniyonu, in a statement issued yesterday in Abuja, described the Information Minister as an unrestrained and compulsive perjurer, whose name has become synonymous with misinformation and untruths.
According to him,“the Nigerian public and the people of Offa know that Lai Mohammed’s utterances are synonymous with deliberate misinformation, unbridled untruths, and outright falsehoods. Right now, he is only playing the cheap politics that he is known to play when the general elections come around.
“The Offa people know how to differentiate between leaders like Dr. Saraki who have stood with them throughout the years and those Lagos-based politicians, like Lai Mohammed, who only come around to make noise, spew political propaganda, and use the tragic loss of their sons and daughters as cheap political points in an election season,” Olaniyonu said.
Saraki’s media aide was reacting to Mohammed’s claim during a radio interview in Kwara State on Christmas day, that the Senate president had trivialised the Offa robbery, which claimed the lives of 33 Nigerians, by saying that he had donated N10million to the Offa Monarch as compensation for victims.
Olaniyonu said those who are trying to implicate the Senate president in the Offa robbery affair by all means, are so fixated on that mission that they are messing up with the due process that would give justice to the victims, both dead and alive, and their immediate families.
He explained that “during the Senate president’s syndicated radio interview, he made it clear that it was unthinkable that anybody would want to link him with armed robbery or violence against his own people. According to Olaniyonu, Saraki also stated categorically that anybody that would want to link him to such violence should first ask what he has to gain from such a dastardly
act.
“It was then the Senate president mentioned that the desperate narrative that has been spun to implicate him after the robbery does not make any sense, as when he visited the monarch, he donated N10million for the care of the wounded — while it has been revealed that the money stolen by the robbers was just N7million.
“ Saraki also stated that those who have tried and have failed to implicate him in the Offa robbery, have been so fixated on that unsuccessful mission that they are now trampling on the due process that would give justice to the victims, both dead or alive, and much-needed closure to their families and the affected community”.
