Again, the American Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) in Abuja has pushed enquiries on whether Nigeria’s Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr. Isa Pantami, is on its watchlist to its headquarters in Washington.
A desk officer who answered a call routed to the FBI Desk in the US Embassy in Abuja directed our reporter to the headquarters.
Reminded that the headquarters announced on its website that it did not have a national email address, he said it was not true.<\/p>\n\n\n
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Recall that another online newspaper had also made a similar enquiry and was also directed to Washington.
According to PRNigeria, its request for clarification over a media report linking the Minister to terrorism to the Public Affairs Section of the US Embassy was referred to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) which is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency.
In a short message to the online publication the embassy said, \u201cThank you for your inquiry, however, we defer all press inquiries on Minister Pantami to the FBI\u201d
Pantami made the threat to sue the newspaper in a statement by his lawyer, Michael Jonathan Numa, Senior Partner of the Karina Tunyan (SAN) and Company, in Abuja.
He said even though the news outlet has retracted the report via its Twitter handle, \u201csuch grave and unverified allegations cannot be wished away by a bland and emotionless tweet which does not show remorse for the immeasurable and malignant damage done to our Client\u2019s pristine reputation.\u201d
He said he has no option than to \u201cpursue every legal means to guard his hard earned reputation as indicated in his letter of 12th April, 2021.
The lawyer said: \u201cWe continue to act as Counsel to Dr. Isa Ali Pantami, the Honourable Minister of Communication and Digital Economy hereinafter referred to as our client and on whose express instruction we issue this press release.
\u201cOur client\u2019s attention has been drawn to a purported \u2018Retraction\u2019 of the unfounded front-page headline publication on the Sunday Edition of the Daily Independent Newspaper dated 11th day of April, 2021, with the title \u2018Disquiet as America Places Nigerian Minister on Watch List.\u2019
\u201cThe newspaper article had contained grave defamatory statements impugning the hard-earned reputation of our client.
\u201cThe Daily Independent Newspaper has now purportedly retracted the grossly libelous statements and allegations via its twitter handle (@IndependentNGR) on the 14th day of April, 2021, claiming that they have realized that the publication \u2018has not been verified to be true\u2019.
\u00a0\u201cThis is an affirmation of the high level of irresponsibility exhibited by the media house which prides itself as \u2018the most read newspaper among the political and business elites.
\u201cA defamatory publication containing such grave and unverified allegations cannot be wished away by a bland and emotionless tweet which does not show contriteness for the immeasurable and malignant damage done to our Client\u2019s pristine reputation.
\u201cThe said retraction having not met our client\u2019s demand leave us with no option than to pursue every legal means to guard the hard earned reputation of our client as earlier indicated in our letter of 12th April, 2021.\u201d
The publication on Pantami, being on the US government watchlist for allegedly having terrorist affiliations, has been vehemently denied by the minister and his supporters on various social media platforms.
However, in an opinion piece, a Nigerian professor of African History at Vanderbilt in the United States, Moses Ochonu, in a piece that went viral on Tuesday, raised pertinent issues on some of the Minister’s comments in the past.<\/p>\n\n\n