Amaechi: I didn’t go to Saraki’s house

Our attention has been drawn to the lead front page report in THISDAY newspapers of today (Monday, October 19, 2015), where it was reported that Rt. Hon. Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, the immediate past Governor of Rivers State “was incensed over the deferment of his screening last week and stormed Saraki’s house to register his protest.”
The THISDAY report, which the respected newspaper got from ‘sources’, further claimed that during the visit of Thursday, last week, Amaechi “was said to have raised his voice to express his frustration before leaving the residence without seeing the Senate President.”
The imagery created in the last four paragraphs of the lead report in THISDAY of today, was an angry Amaechi who stormed the residence of Senate President Bukola Saraki, raised his voice as he made a scene or caused a “ruckus” to display his frustration over the deferment of his screening by the Senate, before “storming out in a huff”, without seeing the Senate President.
This is absolutely not true.
There is a deliberate and carefully calibrated attempt to characterise Amaechi with a very bad and demeaning mannerism. We must clarify that Rt. Hon. Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi did not visit and was not at the residence of the Senate President on Thursday of last week. Since he did not go to the residence of the Senate President on Thursday of last week, so, there is absolutely no way what the newspaper sources claimed to have transpired, happened.
We must emphasise that former Governor Amaechi holds the office of the President of the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in very high esteem and will never disrespect or act in anyway that would put the office in disrepute. However, in this case, the incident reported never occurred either on Thursday or any other day.
While we understand the constraints and pressures journalists face in doing their jobs, we would advise them to be thorough and double-check or even triple-check their sources of information. There seems to exist an axis of fifth columnists, masquerading as ‘sources’ to journalists, but fabricate events, incidences and stories that never happened to malign and destroy the character and reputation of others, while fomenting acrimony and bad blood in the polity.
Journalists must beware of such ‘sources’.
DAVID IYOFOR
RT. HON. CHIBUIKE ROTIMI AMAECHI MEDIA OFFICE