Obaseki’s ex-CSO demands N3.6b from APC chieftains, threatens court action

Former Chief Security Adviser to Governor Godwin Obaseki of Edo State, Mr Haruna Yusuf Abiona, has demanded the sum of N3.6 billion from the Edo State Caretaker Committee Chairman of the All Progressive Congress,(APC) Col David Imuse, Rtd. and three others for defamation of character.

Haruna, in a letter endorsed by his counsel,  Ainabeholo Oseikhuemen, asked the APC chieftains: Imuse, Tony Kabaka Adun, Emperor Jarret Tenebe, State Deputy Chairman, Edo North and Adams Ehigiamusoe Shaba, President, Professional Drivers on Wheel, to tender apology and retraction of the defamatory statements and publications against him within 14 days.

While the retired police officer threatened to institute an action of defamation in the sum of N300 million each from Kabaka and Shaba, he threatened Tenebe N1 billion and Imuse, N2 billion suits respectively.

In the letter dated February 19, 2021, he claimed that the four APC leaders published various malicious statements against him “on the Internet and other social media platforms both in the prints and broadcasting media stations.”

“Some of the false and malicious publications are that you falsely describe our client, Haruna Yusuf Abiona as the mastermind behind the mayhem and terror unleashed at the front of the palace of the Oba of Benin,” the letter read.

The letter further claimed that the politicians also “stated that Haruna Yusuf Abiona is bloodthirsty who introduce banditry in Edo Politics, falsely claiming that our client is issuing death threats and physical assault to members of APC.”

The letter also added that the APC chieftains, in the build-up to the September 19, 2020, governorship election in the state, claimed that Haruna, in connivance with the Edo State Government, plotted to “stage an attack on their own convoy specifically that of the deputy governor, Mr Philip Shaibu in a bid to draw sympathy before the last governorship elections.”

“The above false and malicious publication deliberately made you in various media platforms, widely circulated in the whole world with millions of people accessing such platforms for the purpose of tarnishing our client’s image, reducing him to an irresponsible, violent and wicked person in the minds of the palace bloc as a retired senior police officer and a top government official,” the ex-CSO claimed.

He, therefore, asked the APC chieftains to, within 14 days of service of the letter, ” retract the said false and malicious publications through six national dailies circulating in Nigeria, social media platforms and broadcasting stations where the malicious publications were made and tender a letter of apology.”

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Obaseki’s ex-CSO demands N3.6b from APC chieftains, threatens court action

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