Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo, has petitioned the Inspector General of Police, Muhammed Adamu, over allegations linking him to funds allegedly stolen by anti-corruption chief, Ibrahim Magu.
WITHIN NIGERIA recalls that Osinbajo has described online reports claiming that embattled acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) Acting Chairman, Ibrahim Magu, gave him N4billion as false and baseless fabrications.
An online platform, PointBlank News, run by Jackson Ude, a former director of strategy and communications under President Goodluck Jonathan administration, on July 8, published that Mr Magu embezzled over N39 billion and gave Mr Osinbajo N4 billion for soft landing.
The report claimed that unnamed sources within the panel investigating the suspended EFCC boss “exposed the vice president’s involvement in the scandal.”
“Specifically, Magu was said to have mentioned a N4 billion that he released to the VP based on directives the very day the president left the country for the United Kingdom on medical treatment,” part of the report read.
Meanwhile, Osinbajo in a letter to the IGP through his lawyers, Taiwo Osipitan, on Wednesday said the report was untrue and defamatory.
He also copied the Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, in the letter.
“On the 8th of July 2020, Mr Ude wrote and published on his website www.pointblanknews.com materials/stories which are criminally defamatory of our client. We have the instructions of our client that the said publications are injuriously false in every respect,” the lawyer partly said.
Osinbajo also split at Ude’s Twitter publication where he again accused the vice president of corruption.
“HushBajo. N4billion. The Ghana investment. Okechukwu Enelamah the erand boy. The secretly recorded night vigil prayers at the Villa Chapel. The letter of resignation written for Buhari in Tunis by Tinubu/Osinabjo while Ba was sick. The scheming to take over. Etc. This na pay back, the tweet read.
The tweet was said to have been shared on several social media platforms to make the vice president appear like a “dishonest and disloyal public officer and consequently unfit for the position of the vice president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria which he is occupying,” the official said.
The lawyer asked the IGP to investigate the allegations and if the purveyor was found guilty, the police should initiate criminal proceedings against Mr Ude and his platform to restrain them from future ‘false publications’.
Before now, there have been different unproven reports against Mr Osinbajo in the media.
Recall that The Vanguard newspaper in September last year tendered an apology to Mr Osinbajo over a news report alleging that he mismanaged N90 billion said to have been released by the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) for the 2019 general elections.
The vice president disclosed then that he was ready to wave his constitutionally guaranteed immunity from prosecution to ensure persons who spread falsehood about him were brought to book.
A presidential committee is currently probing the activities of EFCC under Magu.