The All Progressives Congress (APC) Presidential Campaign Council (PCC) has refuted media reports that the President-elect, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, had a meeting with the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Olukayode Ariwoola. The Council declared that Tinubu is presently in Paris, France, and not on the United Kingdom (U.K.) as claimed.
The Director of Media and Publicity of the APC PCC, Bayo Onanuga, in a statement on Thursday night, declared that a media report insinuating that Justice Ariwoola disguised to meet with Tinubu, was “fake, misleading and malicious.”
Onanuga, reiterating that the President-Elect is currently in Paris, France, and not in the UK, asserted that there is an attempt to create doubt about the legitimacy of the election that produced Tinubu as next president to succeed President Muhammadu Buhari.
The speculation of the meeting was springing at a time candidates of the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, in the 2023 presidential have filed petitions at the tribunal challenging the announcement of Tinubu of the APC by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as winner of the election.
Onanuga in the statement declared: “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.
“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.”