Allegations of influence peddling against Amaechi belated – Oni

• Berates Timi Frank submission

Segun Oni, Deputy National Chairman (South) of the All Progressives Congress (APC), says if he is a supreme court judge and Rotimi Amaechi, minister of transport, attempted to influence court judgements through bribery, he would have been arrested immediately.

In an interview with journalists, Oni said the allegations by the judges against Amaechi would not be taken seriously because of late timing.

Sylvester Ngwuta and John Okoro, both justices of the supreme court, had accused Amaechi of attempting to bribe them.

“I am not in the position to defend Amaechi, but I feel very very sad. I am very sad that a justice of the supreme court could come up much later to say somebody attempted to bribe him,” he said.

“If I am a justice of the supreme court, that person would not spend another week before he is arrested. So, because it is a crime, if you see somebody committing crime and you keep quiet and now you are talking about it, do you want people to take you seriously?

“It’s like somebody saying I saw somebody committed rape last year and I didn’t do anything about it. I don’t think that sounds wise. I am not exonerating anybody and there can be investigation.”

He dismissed the statement of Timi Frank, deputy national publicity secretary of the APC, who said the party may be no more by 2019.

Oni said said APC party is the “strongest base that any political system has in Nigeria today”.

“I don’t see that as a reasonable thing to say. I am sorry, whoever said that, I don’t see it as a reasonable thing to say,” he said.

“If anybody says it would not last till 2019, I would say that is wishful thinking, and it is not one of the most reasonable things to say. We can have problems, we will face our problems as its comes, we are not saying that there won’t be turbulent times. If there are turbulent times, we go through it. Turbulent times are normal.

“Even the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in its own period had turbulent times and it went through it, but to say that the extreme to now be thinking that the APC may not exist till 2019, we are already in 2016. You shouldn’t take such a person seriously.”