The Ondo State government has reacted to a statement credited to the national chairman of the chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Mr. Abdullahi Adamu that the state governor, Mr. Oluwarotimi Akeredolu is incapacitated and hospitalised in overseas.
Recall that Adamu was quoted as talking about the “extreme incapacity of the governor of Ondo State” during a meeting with the national leadership of the party and APC state chairmen held in Abuja on Monday.
Reacting to the report, the commissioner for information and orientation, Mr. Bamidele Ademola-Olateju, said that the chairman was quoted out of context.
The commissioner, who described the report as wicked, mischievous and insensitive, said in a statement in Akure that there was no time that Adamu mention that the governor was in a state of “extreme incapacity.”
“The attention of the Ondo State government has been drawn to a report, credited to the Chairman of the APC, Senator Abdullahi Adamu.
“The headline, ‘Akeredolu in state of extreme incapacity, hospitalised’, bore a tinge of the usual mischievous, wicked and insensitive reportage, sponsored by desperate politicians.
“The chairman of the APC in Ondo State, Ade Adetimehin, who attended the meeting has debunked the report as untrue and disconnected from the statement of the chairman at the event.
“The national chairman was indeed excited at the reports on the rate of recovery of Governor Oluwarotimi Akeredolu of Ondo State, and urged all those present at the meeting to pray for his quick return.
“It, therefore, smacks of mischief and unabashed abandonment of professional ethics for a reporter to present this gross misrepresentation, a mischievous twist, as news.
“At no time did the chairman mention that the Governor was in a state of “extreme incapacity,” he said.
Also explaining what transpired at the meeting, the national vice-chairman of the APC, Mr Isaac Kekemeke, said Akeredolu’s name only came up at the meeting when Adamu expressed his sympathy with the state chairmen of the party on the abduction/kidnap of the Ekiti state APC chairman.
Kekemeke said in a statement issued in Akure that the national chairman “merely extended his solidarity to the people of Ondo state on the foreign medical trip of the governor and prayed for his quick recovery and recuperation.”
The statement reads: “It is sad that a genuine empathy and prayer by the national chairman for a governor on the platform of his party was sensationalised and has now become a subject of discourse.
“Governor Akeredolu’s name came up at the meeting when the national chairman was expressing his sympathy with the State chairmen of the party on the abduction/kidnap of their colleague, the Ekiti state APC chairman.
“He merely extended his solidarity to the people of Ondo state on the foreign medical trip of the Governor and prayed for his quick recovery and recuperation.
“I have chosen to put the records straight because I was at the meeting and more so that both our party’s National Publicity Secretary and his Deputy were not at the meeting.
“The national chairman did not and could not have made such comments like Akeredolu in a state of extreme incapacity, but he only genuinely prayed for the governor’s quick recovery.”
