Ibekimi Oriamaja Reports
Senator Solomon Adesola, the head of the finance committee in the Senate, on
Friday denied making any of the alleged disparaging remarks about the Igbo.
In a statement sent by his media adviser, Kayode Odunaro, Adeola allegedly ascribed the remark to a seller of false information.
The statement reads: “Senator Solomon Adeola (APC, Lagos West), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance, has been made aware of a fake news story that has been circulating on social media platforms to the effect that he has stated that Igbos are Nigeria’s problem.
“On a good day, many would have overlooked the fraudulent fabrication that came from a fictitious Facebook account of a person who was suspected of being a ‘Obidient’ as the shenanigans of an unfounded activist attempting to manipulate social media for the benefit of their principal.
“However, the Senator considered it wise to refute the entire statement and report as flagrant and unmitigated fabrication that can only be conjectured by a very sick and demented soul when the disparaging, unattributed, and false quotation was lifted by a suspect site and presented as news.
For the record, Senator Adeola has spent the last three weeks on his yearly vacation and has not made any public statements throughout that time.
As can be observed from the statement’s original source, it was not connected to any specific event or location and could only have been made up by the author in order to discredit Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, a steadfast supporter of the APC presidential candidate.
For the record, Senator Adeola represents more Igbos than most Igbo senators in the Senate and likely more Igbos than one or two South East states in his largest senatorial district of Lagos West, which includes about 12 million Nigerians of all tribes. Igbos are particularly prevalent in areas of his district like Amuwo-Odofin, Oshodi Isolo, Ojo, Ifako-Ijaiye, Alim
There is no way I would disparage a significant portion of my Igbo constituents who had twice elected me as their senator and given me the honorific title of “Dike Di Ora Nma 1” (translated to “The Beloved Powerful Man of the Society”) of Lagos State through all their traditional rulers, represented by Eze Uchechukwu Nwanchukwu, the Eze Ndigbo of Lagos State, and other Igbo traditional rulers from Lagos
“The senator stated that the fake news of the so-called ‘Obidients’ against him, which is part of a program intended to attack all notable APC presidential candidate supporters and loyalists as noted by the Tinubu Campaign Organization only yesterday, will not cause him to disparage any patriotic Ndigbo in Lagos or anywhere in Nigeria as the ‘Obidients’ are merely misinformed social media activists without roots even among Ndigbo of the South East, the senator continued.
“Our APC presidential candidate, Tinubu, is a cosmopolitan “city boy” with a record of engaging and raising many Ndigbos on the basis of competence in Lagos and elsewhere, with Mr. Ben Akabueze, the Director General of Budget Office of Nigeria as an example from his commissionership in Lagos State to national limelight,” he said.
The senator reaffirmed his commitment to representing all of his constituents, including the millions of Ndigbos who reside in the Lagos West Senatorial District, and he added that the benefits of all of his empowerment programs to date have been shared by all ethnic groups, as evidenced by the names and phone numbers of Igbos who have benefited.
