‘Okupe’s attack a proxy war,’ Lai denies Saraki’s contribution to his ministerial appointment

Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, has described claim that the Senate President and Director General of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Presidential Campaign Council, Bukola Saraki, helped him get a ministerial position as a lie.

Special Adviser (Media) to the Director General of the PDP Presidential Campaign Council, Dr. Doyin Okupe, was quoted to have made the claim in a statement on Sunday.

But the minister responding in a statement through his media aide, Segun Adeyemi, on Monday said the statement in which Okupe “bold-facedly credited” Saraki with his appointment as minister “is nothing but fiction writing, for which he (Okupe) deserves a hall of infamy award (in the fiction writing segment).”

The statement read, “Not one of the claims he made in his statement is true. For the record, Alhaji Lai Mohammed owes his appointment as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to President Muhammadu Buhari and no one else. It is therefore laughable that anyone will seek to take credit for that appointment.

“We challenge Dr. Okupe, who concocted the story in question, to make available to Nigerians any evidence he may have to support his assertion that the President sought the permission of Dr. Saraki to appoint Alhaji Mohammed as Minister.

“We understand that Dr. Okupe’s cheap attempt at mud-throwing is nothing but a proxy fight, rooted deeply in the politics of Kwara State.

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“We are aware that Dr. Okupe’s boss is feeling the heat emanating from the ‘O To Ge’ (enough is enough) movement in Kwara, and that even the strongest of men will become disoriented and disillusioned at losing the support of a people who once venerated them to high heavens. But that is a self-inflicted wound for which Okupe’s boss, an acclaimed slave master, has no one but himself to blame.

“Alhaji Mohammed is very proud to lead the ‘O To Ge’ movement that is set to finally bring down the Berlin Wall of political hegemony in Kwara State and send Dr. Okupe’s boss into political oblivion. That will also free Dr. Okupe himself from merely being his master’s voice, so he can fully devote his time to his new-found pastime – fiction writing.”

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