Kaduna PDP gubernatorial candidate threatens to take legal action over alleged defamation

THE gubernatorial candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Kaduna State, Hon Isa Ashiru has threatened to take legal action against a former governorship aspirant, Dr Mohammed Bello over alleged defamation of character.

It will be recalled that Bello who recently left the PDP for the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), said he resigned his membership of the PDP because he was not comfortable working with the PDP’s gubernatorial candidate whose credentials were in question.

According to the PDP Governorship lawyer Emmanuel Toro in a statement made available to the Nigerian Tribune in Kaduna on Wednesday noted that Bello who voluntarily withdrew from the governorship contest on 30 September before the commencement of the governorship primaries of the party to support Hon Ashiru, had before leaving the PDP said “there were talks that came up concerning the authenticity of the documents that our candidate presented for the purpose of contesting in the 2019 general elections.”

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Concerned by the defamatory statement against his person, the governorship candidate’s legal team headed by Toro wrote to Bello demanding for retraction and public apology.

According to the letter served on the former governorship aspirant, “the publish defamatory statement has not only defamed the hard-earned reputation and integrity of the guber candidate, it has also subjected him to public ridicule, scorn, opprobrium, and odium”.

“Based on the foregoing, therefore, it is our client’s instruction to demand from you; and we hereby so demand that, you forthwith and in any event within seven (7) clear days commencing from the date of receipt of this letter, retract the defamatory Statement and publicly apologize to our client (Hon. Ashiru).

“The retraction and apology shall be published in two (2) offline national dailies, your facebook wall and page and shall be given wide publicity in like manner as the content of the defamatory statement.

In addition thereto, you shall pay N500m as compensation for the injury and emotional trauma you caused to our client as a result of the published defamatory statement, given the period that it was made and being circulated.

“In the event of your refusal to comply with, or make good our demands as aforestated, we have our client’s instructions to explore all legal means available under our extant laws to ensure that these demands are met.

Specifically, but without prejudice to other recourse, we shall file an action in a court of law against you for defamation of our client’s character and claim special aggravated damages,” the letter read.

The PDP’s governorship candidate was elected member, Kaduna State House of Assembly from 1999 to 2007, and from 2007 to 2015 he was elected member House of Representative, representing Makarfi\Kudan federal constituency.

In 2014, he contested the Kaduna State gubernatorial seat under the platform of APC and lost to governor Nasir el-Rufai at the governorship primaries,the statement declared.