Aide to former President Goodluck Jonathan and ambassador designate Reno Omokri, has described President Bola Tinubu is a person of good character, high moral standing, who has never been a drug lord.
Omokri made the assertion in his response to human rights activist, Omoyele Sowore statement to the extent that he (Omokri) had in the build up to the 2023 general elections labeled Tinubu a drug lord.
Recall that at his ongoing trial on alleged cyberstalking of President Tinubu, Sowore had on Tuesday, through his lawyer, Marshal Abubakar, tendered video evidence of Omokri calling the president a drug lord.
Sowore is arguing that if the Department of State Service (DSS) did not see anything wrong and arrested Omokri for the same uncomplimentary remarks against Tinubu, why should his own case be different?
However, responding to Sowore, Omokri in a statement though not denying making the said uncomplimentary remarks stressed that he was misled by media publications into reaching such conclusion about the president.
“With regard to the claims made by Mr Omoyele Sowore and his counsel, Mr Abubakar Marshal, in court on Tuesday, January 27, 2026, I do freely admit that I did make uncomplimentary remarks about the then Presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, while believing those comments to be true at the time I uttered them.
“Subsequent to making those statements, I discovered that they were not, in fact, true, and I publicly withdrew them in writing and on video at various times and through multiple platforms”, he said.
Speaking further, Omokri recalled that when Tinubu was sworn in as president on Monday, May 29, 2023, he had released a statement affirming him as President of Nigeria and urging members of the public to put the past behind them and give him their full support.
He noted that he had repeated this stance and public call on October 26, 2023, when the Supreme Court of Nigeria ruled in favour of the President.
“In that judgment, the honourable court declared that there were no criminal charges or convictions against the President. It clarified what had happened in the past, which had been misrepresented by some media.
“On the same day the judgement was rendered, I accepted it, applauded it, and stated that, based on that verdict, my stance on the statements I had made against the President had changed: not only was it wrong, but I fully believed it was fallacious.
“When members of the Peoples Democratic Party continued to dwell on those unfounded allegations, I arranged to be interviewed on Newscentral Television on Thursday, March 27, 2025, where I said that the President had been “exonerated”, a word that I used intentionally, as I have a Master’s in Law from the United Kingdom, and understood and wanted to project and confirm to the Nigerian public that a constitutionally recognised official body had absolved the President of any wrongdoing, which is the legal meaning of that word”, he said.
Omokri added that he had on June 11, 2025, admitted to the Nigerian public and the world at large during a live broadcast that he was wrong about those statements he had made about the then candidate, and that he relied on false publications in the media in making them.
The ambassadorial appointee explained that after he got accurate judicial pronouncements that exonerated the President and established beyond any reasonable doubt that the information “I had erroneously believed, chiefly from Mr Omoyele Sowore’s platform, Saharareporters, was false, I withdrew those statements and apologised for them”.
He disclosed that before then he had sought a private audience with the President himself on October 1, 2024, “where I flew into Nigeria from my home in California, and apologised to him in person, prostrating flat on the ground, before stating that I was misled by publications in the media into making those statements, and that my actions were not malicious, but that I was then labouring under a mistaken belief that what I had read in the media was true, when in fact it was wrong.
“Finally, in law, it is ultra vires to use previous statements made at a time when it was believed to be true to establish the veracity of a claim you yourself caused to be published, or to justify yourself or offer a defence, when the maker of that statement has admitted that the statements were made in good faith, but subsequently found to be untrue, and then publicly withdrawn, with various attempts at restitution made by the author of those statements.
“President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is not, has never been, and will never be a drug lord. He is a person of good character, high moral standing, and a professed Muslim, with the largeness of heart to forgive his enemies and opponents when they realise the error of their ways, which is, amongst other reasons, why he is uniquely and particularly suited to lead a multiethnic, multicultural, multi-religious, and multiracial country like Nigeria.
“I make these statements freely and of my own volition, knowing them to be true, and I am fully prepared to testify to the above under oath in court, along with the tendering of documentary and timestamped evidence establishing the veracity of the affirmations here made”, he added.
Alex Enumah
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