Amidst the rumoured anxiety over President Muhammadu Buhari’s health and an alleged plot to force Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, who is acting for him to resign, Senate President Bukola Saraki, on Wednesday night denied a link to any such conspiracies.
In a statement on his facebook page and personal twitter handle, Saraki distanced himself from “speculation on some online media about a supposed meeting of some state governors who held Vice President Yemi Osinbajo to ransom, seeking his resignation and for the Senate President to take over the Presidency.
“My first initial reaction was to ignore this empty rumour but after being inundated with calls from across the country and abroad, it became necessary for me to make clarifications from our own end,” according to Saraki, Nigeria’s number three man after Buhari and Osinbajo.
He expressed delight that the Presidency had dismissed such speculation and showed that there is no substance to the rumour he described as “baseless, empty and unintelligent mischief.”
Those peddling such, he added, are those who do not love this country, because such “speculation can only bring ill-will, disunity and crisis to the country.”
He urged the conspiracy theorists to desist from such and stop linking him to any “evil plot.”
An earlier statement by the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, on Wednesday in Abuja, threatened that the Federal Government would visit authors of the fabricated messages, who are already under investigation, with the full weight of the law, even as he assured that there is no iota of truth in theM.
He also stressed that there is no truth in the messages about purported emergency meetings of state governors in Abuja or anywhere, urging Nigerians to disregard such naysayers who also resorted to the use of ethnicity and religion as tools to divide Nigerians, over-heat the polity, and cause panic among the citizenry.
“While opposition and criticism are all part of democracy, the crafting and circulation of subversive materials and scare-mongering are not.
“The emerging trend of resorting to destabilisation and scare-mongering is not unexpected, considering this government’s clamp-down on the corrupt elements in the society.’’
The minister said the scare mongering was because government had blocked all financial leaks, enthroned probity and transparency and derailed the gravy train of the looters of public treasury.