Presidency Denies Rumours That Heavy Birthday Partying sent President Jonathan to London Hospital
President Goodluck Jonathan has described as fiction the story that he fell ill in London after a “heavy birthday party thrown to celebrate his 56th birthday” at the Intercontinental Hotel.
Dr.
Reuben Abati, the President’s special adviser on media, signed the
appropriate press statement on November 23, 2013, Saturday. The
Presidency expressed regrets that despite the open admittance of the
president’s ill health in London, some online organs went ahead to make
what he called “scurrilous distortions of the facts of the President’s
indisposition”.
“The truth is that President Jonathan observed his 56th birthday anniversary quietly. For part of the day, he was airborne, in transit between Abuja and London. On arrival in London, he spent the rest of the day in the privacy of his hotel room. It has never been his custom to celebrate birthday anniversaries and no exception was made this year. No birthday party was therefore held for the President in London,” Dr. Reuben Abati’s statement said.
The
statement accused Sahara Reporters and “some other reckless, lawless,
impudent and unpatriotic
internet-based media of cooking up the entirely
fictional, malicious, hate-driven and scurrilous distortion of the
facts of the President’s indisposition”.
The statement does not rule out legal action against the peddlers of the false report.
“As unregulated as they are, Sahara Reporters and their ilk are not beyond the bounds of legal action for libel and wilful defamation of the character and reputation of a President who has courageously stepped forward to serve his country. They know very well that they can never substantiate or prove the constant false allegations and innuendoes they publish for the sole purpose of negatively portraying President Jonathan and his administration.“Their incessant claim of a bibulous President is pure fiction and blackmail, and the product of malicious imagination. We warn that our forbearance of their disrespectful caricaturing of the President is not limitless.“The Presidency will like to reiterate the trite point that no human being is beyond health challenges irrespective of their station in life. Sadly, this commonplace fact appears to be beyond the understanding of the publishers of Sahara Reporters who seem to have lost all sense of propriety, decency and human compassion”, the statement concluded.
