You can’t blackmail me – Tinubu tells Melaye

National Leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, has advised the senator representing Kogi West Senatorial District, Dino Melaye, to look elsewhere for people to blackmail over the fallout of the National Assembly’s leadership election.

Tinubu gave the advice while reacting to an allegation by Senator Melaye that he has decided to back Senator Smart Adeyemi of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), who is currently challenging his (Melaye) electoral victory at the Court of Appeal.

Melaye, an APC senator and a strong supporter of Senator Bukola Saraki, who emerged Senate President against the wish of the party’s leadership, had claimed that Tinubu had contacted the immediate-past Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mr. Mohammed Bello Adoke (SAN), to take over the legal battle on behalf of Adeyemi.

He also said that Adeyemi, on the request of Tinubu, had forwarded details of the suit to Adoke, asking him to look for a judge in the Court of Appeal that would offer assistance.

But speaking through his Media Adviser, Mr. Sunday Dare, the APC National Leader, described Melaye’s claim as nothing but a “kitchen of malicious lies.”

He said: “They are all over the social and traditional media, spewing lies and planting stories. We are not about that. Nigerians are not as gullible as they think. He is aligned with people who want to kill the party, and we wish him luck, but they will not succeed because the party belongs to the Nigerian people.

“This blackmail, like other ones, will not work. It cannot stick. Adoke? Who is he? Tinubu cannot recall when last he saw him or even spoke with him. Dino should look elsewhere for people to blackmail.”

Melaye, who maintained that he had no regret over his role, leading to the emergence of Saraki as the Senate President, had claimed that he incurred the wrath of Tinubu after refusing to do his bidding during the recently concluded election of presiding officers of the 8th Senate.

Read also: Let’s move on, Atiku begs Tinubu, others

“I have no regret supporting Senator Saraki and my electoral victory was ordained by God and not by man. Therefore, no mortal can reverse it. In God I trust, no matter how desperate they might be. I am privy to an electronic mail sent to Adoke by an Abuja-based senior editor who is close to Tinubu in which he forwarded the court papers filed by Smart Adeyemi at the tribunal to Adoke,” he said.

The Kogi senator, whose election was recently upheld by the Election Petition Tribunal in Lokoja, further claimed that Tinubu, in the said e-mail, asked Adoke “to look for a trusted justice in the Court of Appeal who would be useful for Smart Adeyemi.”

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