The Ondo State government, on Tuesday, insisted that the state governor, Oluwarotimi Akeredolu, was not incapacitated as reported by a national daily.
The government described the media report credited to the national chairman of the ruling All Progressives Congress(APC), Senator Abdullahi Adamu, “as wicked, mischievous and insensitive reportage.”
A national daily (not LEADERSHIP) on Tuesday quoted the national chairman of APC to have said that Governor Akeredolu was incapacitated and hospitalised abroad.
But, reacting to the media report, the State Commissioner for Information and Orientation, Bamidele Ademola-Olateju, disclosed that such a report was sponsored by desperate politicians.
Ademola-Olateju noted that the state chairman of the party, Engr. Ade Adetimehin, who attended the meeting has debunked the report as untrue and disconnected from the statement of the APC national chairman at the event.
According to the information Commissioner, “the headline, “Akeredolu in state of extreme incapacity, hospitalized”, bore a tinge of the usual mischievous, wicked and insensitive. ”
She insisted that at no time did the national chairman of the party mention that the Governor was in a state of “extreme incapacity”.
Her words: “The attention of Ondo State government has been drawn to a report, credited to the Chairman of the APC, Senator Abdullahi Adamu, on the 11th of July, 2023.
The headline, “Akeredolu in state of extreme incapacity, hospitalized”, bore a tinge of the usual mischievous, wicked, and insensitive reportage, sponsored by desperate politicians.
“The National Chairman was indeed excited at the reports on the rate of recovery of the Governor of Ondo State, Arakunrin Oluwarotimi Akeredolu, SAN, CON, and urged all those present at the meeting to pray for his quick return.
“It, therefore, smacks of mischief and unabashed abandonment of professional ethics for a reporter to present this gross misrepresentation, a mischievous twist, as news.
“He is, evidently, not in any critical state that should warrant this reprehensible conduct as he still sent a post to the Executive Council Committee platform yesterday.
“Mr. Governor is NOT incapacitated. He will return to his duty as soon as the doctors certify him fully fit to do so.”
She, however, advised the members of the public to ignore the news as the contents therein “exist in the realm of the imagination of workers of iniquity.”