Alleged Smear Campaign: Reps’ Candidate Demands Apology, N100m From Opponent

All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate in Amuwo Odofin Federal Constituency, Prince Lanre Sanusi, has threatened to drag one of his opponents in the just-concluded primaries, Comrade Ayodele Adewale, to court if he refuses to retract his defamatory publication against him.

Apart from the retraction, Prince Sanusi demanded the sum of N100 million as compensation for the alleged defamation of his image and reputation.

The threat is contained in a pre-action notice written by Sanusi’s lawyer, Adeyinka Olumide-Fusika (SAN), to Adewale, who was also a former APC organising secretary.

In the notice dated June 28, 2923, the lawyer claimed that a petition written by Adewale and addressed to the chairman, APC Primary Election Appeal Committee for National Assembly and several media houses was done in bad faith and it is malicious.

Olumide-Fusika stated, “You will no doubt agree with me that you made the publication maliciously, in pursuit of your desperate quest, as you went on further to disclose in the letter, to ‘be given the ticket of the APC’, the contest for which you had woefully lost to my client, having come out a miserable fourth in votes scored.

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“In the circumstance, you will, within 14 days from the date of this letter, furnish me with either your justification for the imputations, if beyond the malicious one pointed out above, or a retraction. If the latter, then it will be expected to come with apologies and your proposal as to compensation in a reasonable amount.

“Failing the above, my instructions are to issue a writ against you for the following remedies: retraction and apologies for the defamatory publication and damages in the sum of N100 million,” he said.

Prince Sanusi also, in a separate letter, written by Olumide-Fusika to the online platform, asked Sahara Reporters to desist from publishing unverifiable stories, saying what was published was untrue and false.

He said, “Contrary to what you published, my client was at no time arrested by the EFCC or any other law enforcement agency, whether in Nigeria or abroad, and whether on a complaint alleged in your publication or any other.

“Considering that your masthead indicates that you operate from New York, which is in the United States of America, you should be able to easily investigate from the Dallas City Government Hospital in the United States whether it has any case of ‘COVID-19 materials’ that were under the charge of two truck drivers who diverted them from where they were supposed to be taken in the United States to Nigeria.”