Senator Chris Anyanwu, representing Imo East Senatorial District, has challenged a former governor of Imo State, Ikedi Ohakim, to produce the letter of apology he claimed the senator wrote to the late military head of state, General Sani Abacha.
In a statement, Anyanwu accused the former governor of mentioning, in a TV interview, that he wrote an apology letter to Abacha in his autobiography, Bold Lead.
He said: “One thing to emphasise is that BOLD LEAP is my autobiography, meaning l wrote about myself, not Imo State, Imo Government or Governor Ikedi Ohakim. It is about my whole life and my life traverses many places outside Nigeria. Imo State and its toxic politics of the time were merely small chapters to what is a long story. BOLD LEAP is not an Imo story. No. It is not at all.
“I observe that Ohakim had not read the book when he spoke. He spoke in rambling generalities, not on specifics; went into the book review to borrow the observation of the reviewer on production.”
“And finally, that bizarre story about a letter to Abacha, (may his soul rest in peace). How does a man of Ohakim’s age and standing in society sit down and conjure up an asinine, egregious lie about someone writing an apology to Abacha and the Federal Government?
“Is it intelligent to tell tales that are so hair-brained they can make a dog laugh? No one could write Abacha or his government and it became Nigeria’s greatest secret. How did it happen that a document that could have provided the propaganda-hungry administration its greatest campaign weapon globally got locked up and no one else mentioned it, wrote about it in the numerous books written on that era in these 30 years? Except Ohakim!! Where was this letter written; when was it written, by whom and to whom was it given? And how did it happen that it was only Ohakim that had access to it?
“I don’t know anybody that wrote Abacha. I don’t write or talk of things I don’t know. What I know is that as far as I was concerned, that kind of heinous idea could not be contemplated, uttered, let alone written by me, even under the gun. End of story.”
