Nigeria’s president-elect, Bola Tinubu on Thursday denied meeting the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Olukayode Ariwoola secretly in London.
According to some reports, Tinubu had arranged for Ariwoola to secretly meet him in London to influence the outcome of the court’s rulings.
Opposition parties have challenged the outcome of the election with the Labour Party calling for a cancellation of the February 25 presidential polls.
“Our attention has been drawn to the grossly fake, misleading, and malicious story about the Chief Justice of Nigeria Olukayode Ariwoola disguising himself to meet president-elect Bola Tinubu in London,” Bayo Onanuga, the director of media and publicity, APC presidential campaign council said in a statement.
“The story was a pure concoction from the hallucinating minds of hatchet men bent on creating doubts and public distrust about the legitimacy of our recent election, which was won by Bola Tinubu.
He added, “We refute emphatically that there has been no clandestine meeting between the president-elect and the respected Chief Justice of our country, anywhere. It’s pure fabricated news, groundless in fact and authenticity.
“To show that the story was a mere salacious fiction, meant to draw traffic to the discredited purveyor, it claimed the Chief Justice left Nigeria for London on 11 March, on a wheelchair to board a plane.
“The president-elect left Nigeria on 21 March, 10 clear days thereafter. What kind of appointment or secret meeting will the two men have arranged in London, with so wide disparate arrival dates, except in the imagination of the false news merchants?
“We can confirm that the president-elect, who left Nigeria Tuesday has not been in London. He is right now in France to have a deserved rest, after a hectic campaign that began in January 2022.
“He will go to London thereafter before proceeding to Mecca for the lesser Hajj.
“As we move towards inauguration on 29 May 2023, Nigerians should expect more false and salacious news from a section of the Nigerian media, on the payroll of the opposition.
“We urge the media once again to cross-check their information from the President-elect media office before rushing to press,” Onanuga added.
