President Jonathan
threatens SaharaReporters with libel, defamation…
Found
this news on Sahara Reporters. Apparently the president is threatening to sue
the online news agency for defamation for reporting that his health problems
while in London may have been caused by heavy partying in celebration of his
birthday last week.
Meanwhile,
presidential spokesman Reuben Abati said yesterday that the president will
return to Nigeria today having been certified fit to travel after receiving
treatment for acute abdominal pains. The doctors said no surgical intervention
was required. Sahara Reporters libel report below...
Nigeria
leader, President Goodluck Jonathan, has threatened to take SaharaReporters to
court for reporting that his health problems in London during the week may have
resulted from heavy partying in celebration of his 56th birthday.
In
a statement by his spokesman, Reuben Abati, the president condemned what he
called the “utterly irresponsible, deplorable, highly unprofessional and
unethical antics of certain fringe elements operating in the nebulous sphere of
cyberspace who persist in seizing every opportunity to unjustifiably malign and
impugn the character and integrity of the elected leader of their country.”
He
said it was regrettable that while the public had been duly informed that Mr.
Jonathan had received precautionary medical attention for an unexpected
indisposition in London in compliance with the leader’s standing instruction
that Nigerians must never be kept in the dark about the state of his health,
SaharaReporters and other reckless, lawless, impudent and unpatriotic
internet-based ignored the official script
“with their entirely fictional, malicious, hate-driven and scurrilous distortion of the facts.”
Reiterating
the denial of a party in London to celebrate President Jonathan's birthday on
Wednesday night, Abati said the president upon arrival spent the day in the
privacy of his hotel room and that it has never been his custom to celebrate
birthday anniversaries. In particular, there was certainly no drinking spree,
he claimed.
“As
unregulated as they are, SaharaReporters and their ilk are not beyond the
bounds of legal action for libel and willful defamation of the character and
reputation of a President who has courageously stepped forward to serve his
country,” the statement threatened.
“They
know very well that they can never substantiate or prove the constant false
allegations and innuendoes they publish for the sole purpose of negatively
portraying President Jonathan and his administration.
“Their
incessant claim of a bibulous President is pure fiction and blackmail, and the
product of malicious imagination. We warn that our forbearance of their
disrespectful caricaturing of the President is not limitless.”
Despite
Mr. Jonathan’s threats and deployment of scare tactics, SaharaReporters stands by
its account of the events in London in the past few days.
While
we have the attention of the president and the hawks in the presidency, we take
this opportunity to draw their attention to the scandalous quality of Nigerian
governance that SaharaReporters and most of the Nigerian media have been
reporting for many years, of which his government forms only a part.
As
the 2015 election approaches and Mr. Jonathan tries to invite the sympathy of
Nigerians in his favor, we challenge him to prove— including in a court of
law—that these reports have been “entirely fictional, malicious, hate-driven
and scurrilous distortion of the facts.”
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