By Mercy Adi
The leader of the 10th senate, senator Okpeyemi Bamidele on Thursday refuted the circulating claims of an altercation between the president of the senate, Senator Godswill Akpabio and himself.
In a press release signed by the Directorate of Media and Public Affairs,
Office of the Senate Leader, Bamidele described the claims as fake and unfounded. “our attention has been drawn to fake news currently being circulated on the X handle of one Jackson Ude, a known serial blackmailer and cash-and-carry journalist”.
“For the record, it is a verifiable fact that Senator Bamidele has never been involved in physical assault in over two decades of his political trajectory, not even when he was a young man leading the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) as President”.
“It is surprising that the purveyor of this misleading information in his selfish agenda and unprofessional conduct threw ethos of Journalism into waste bin and decided to feast on roadside gists to tarnish the image of the Senate Leader”.
Senator Bamidele described the intent of the fake news as one meant to cause disaffection within the Senate and by extension; heating up the political system.
He said, “to think that the Senate Leader, President of the Senate and other principal officers of the Senate together received the Chinese Ambassador to Nigeria, Mr. YU Dunhai and his delegation few minutes after leaving the plenary on Wednesday is a significant testimony against Ude’s imagination.
To clarify on the relationship between the senate president and the leader,photographs of the Chinese envoys with the leadership of the Senate were widely published in major national newspapers. It is equally verifiable that the Senate Leader and the Senate President both drove out of the National Assembly premises in the same vehicle yesterday.
The Senate Leader sounded a note of warning to all attention speakers in the likes of Ude, he warned of a more stiffer response to such allegations, emphasizing that his gentlemanliness should not be seen as a weakness.
“Henceforth, the Leader will be forced to use the instrumentality of the law to protect himself and his office as enshrined in the CyberCrime Act 2015. We, therefore, urge the public to disregard this misinformation and treat it with the disrespect it entirely deserves”, He concluded.