The President of the Senate, Senator Bukola Saraki has denied report linking his wife to a purported probe by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), describing it as a fabrication and an attempt to tarnish the image of his family.
Although the spokesman of the commission Wilson Uwajare said the EFCC is currently probing “many high profile politicians and their suspected accomplices, he added that he could not confirm if the Senate President’s wife, Toyin, was among the persons or not.
Saraki, in a statement called on members of the public to disregard the report credited to a United States-based Nigerian online news medium.
The Senate President also demanded a retraction from the news medium, with apologies tendered to Saraki and the National Assembly.
The media team said from the tone of the report, it was obvious that the news blog was doing the bidding of some pay masters, who it said had an axe to grind with the Senate President.
The Statement read: “We hereby request the general public to disregard the antics of Sahara Reporters.
“We further call on Sahara Reports to immediately retract this offending publication and offer an unequivocal apology to His Excellency Senator Saraki, the National Assembly and the citizenry of Nigeria for this unprovoked, reckless and mindless publication.”
It continued: “The Media Office of the Senate President hereby uses this opportunity to put it on record that the posts by Sahara Reporters are completely false with no iota of truth whatsoever.
“We also challenge Sahara Reporters to either post facts or any documentation with proof or desist from misleading the reading public with dirty works of fiction apparently commissioned by some politicians in an attempt to destabilize the legislative arm of government and the country as a whole.
“It is obvious that Sahara Reporters in the last one month has no interest in other stories other than to fabricate fallacies and falsehood against the person of the Senate President and members of his family.
“While we are aware that the online publication is only doing the bidding of its sponsors and simply joining forces with political detractors who after failing to achieve their partisan aims believe that all is fair in war, we believe that journalism is a public trust and those who hold the trust should, even under extreme circumstance, refrain from abusing the trust.
“We therefore call on fellow citizens and all members of the international community to treat the Sahara Reporters’ publication as what they are: mere falsehood not to be accorded any measure of importance”
