Punch Abuja correspondent, Sunday Aborisade and that of Vanguard Newspaper, Henry Umoru, have been cleared of story making the rounds that they received N2m bribe from Sen. Bukola Saraki on behalf of six other journalists to launder the troubled Senate President’s image.
The clean bill of health was handed down by the Nigerian Senate Press Corps after investigating the alleged N2 million largesse purportedly given by Senator Saraki, to eight senate correspondents working for different media houses.
Worried by the shocking report, the executives of the Senate press corps set up a panel to unravel the veracity of the claims.
But the committee headed by the correspondent of Daily Newswatch newspapers, Mr. Taiye Odewale, at the end of its thorough investigations, submitted on Thursday cleared Aborisade, Umoru and others of an complicity, declaring their innocence.
In the report, the senate press corp committee noted that allegations of racketerring levelled against the reporters of Punch, Vanguard and others were baseless and a mere blackmail.
The committee found that although the senate president through the head of his media and a former Commissioner in Ogun State, Mr. Yusuph Olaniyonu, duly invited the reporters to the assignment, the claim that they collected money was totally false.
The report further clarified that the allegation that the reporters collected a bribe after the event was incorrect and baseless because no single member of the 75-member press corp wrote any petition concerning it to the committee.
It also noted that formal and informal investigations conducted by the panel among the journalists who attended the assignment and the four-member team of the Senate President media team, did not establish the fact that money exchanged hands before, during or after the event.
Part of the report read, “……The senate president was quoted to have remarked thus after the interview, ‘I will later meet with the entire Senate Press Corps on Tuesday, June 30th 2015 here at the same venue for a fast-breaking dinner’ which eventually took place…..”
The committee, while absolving the affected journalists of any wrong doing by honouring an invitation extended to them, also, commended them for agreeing to send the transcribed texts of the interview to other journalists who were not invited to the assignment.
The panel did not recommend any sanction against the affected reporters because they neither initiated the event nor hijacked an assignment meant for the entire senate press corps.
It, however, recommended that executive of the corps should initiate a meeting with the head of Saraki’s media team and point out the implications of organising a select group of journalists to interview his principal.
