Kashamu Writes Obasanjo, Threatens Suit Over Letter

A LEADER of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Buruji Kashamu, has asked former President Olusegun Obasanjo to withdraw the reference to him in his letter to President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan.    
                  
   In a letter written to Obasanjo on his behalf by his lawyer, Dr. Alex Aigbe Izinyon (SAN), Kashamu warned that failure on Obasanjo’s part to strike out or withdraw the allusion he made to him in the letter as a ‘criminal’ would see to him suing him for defamation.   
                            
   In the said letter titled “Defamatory publication, injurious and malicious falsehood and unbridled vendetta against Prince Buruji Kashamu”, Izinyon (SAN) wrote thus: “We have been briefed by Prince Buruji Kashamu hereinafter referred to as our client and we have his firm and unequivocal instruction to write you on the above matter in the terms hereunder:

  “Our client has informed us and drawn our attention to your letter titled ‘Before it is too late’ to His Excellency, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, GCFR dated 2nd December, 2013 which said content was published in several print and electronic media.  The content of this letter went viral upon its publication.

  “As an elder statesman, and writing purportedly under that capacity to Mr. President Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, GCFR after x-raying your complaints and grievances, our client informed us that you went viral on him in the said letter with all venoms, unprintable vituperations, condemnations, judgmental, innuendos, sarcasm, cocktail of contortion, malicious and misleading falsehood against him.

  “Specifically, at pages 14 to 15 of the letter you made libelous, false and totally fictional statements concerning our client and quoted extensively from a spurious source, which you claimed was produced by one Lansana Gberie, who, from a search on the internet, is revealed to be a Senior Research fellow with the Africa Conflict Prevention Programme of the Institute for Security Studies in Addis Ababa. The paper which you claim to have extracted your quotation from is however untraceable.

  “Those false and malicious statements, which are too extensive to set out in this letter, held our client out to public odium and portrayed him as a criminal involved in narcotics-related criminal activities who would have been in jail but for the protection given by the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria from extradition to and prosecution in the United States of America…

  “It is in the light of the foregoing that we have our client’s instruction to demand and receive a retraction of the said words as shown above and published in the same prominence in leading Nigerian Newspapers, within five clear days from the date of this letter.

  “If however you chose to ‘sit don look’, we have further instruction without any further notice to you to seek legal redress…”

...........LEMMY UGHEGBE, GUARDIAN NIGERIA