Date: 2019-08-19

The wife of a former Senate President, Mrs Toyin Saraki, has given Kwara State Government, Kwara state chapter of All Progressives Congress (APC) and others 24 hours to retract publication on her ownership of Ilorin Amusement Park and apologise for defaming her person.

This was contained in a letter issued by the lawyers acting for Mrs Saraki, to Kwara State Government, the state Chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and one Titi Anifowoshe, a personal aide to Minister-nominee, Senator Gbemisola Rukayat Saraki-Fowora, warning them to retract a defamatory story they sponsored on social media against the former First Lady of the state on the ownership of the Ilorin amusement park.

In a letter addressed to the Kwara State APC Chairman, Bashiru Bolarinwa and the others, the law firm of Austen-Peters & Co demanded that the state government, the ruling party and the aide of the minister-designate should publish a retraction within 24 hours.

"Our client finds the entirety of the publication mendacious, libellous and criminally defamatory. "She believes that the peddling of malicious falsehood in the said publication was done deliberately and maliciously in a bid to bring her to disrepute before right-thinking members of the public, especially because there is no iota of truth in the publication. "First, Our Client has never at any time, owned, nor sought to own any portion or the whole, of the Ilorin Metropark, formerly known as Ilorin Amusement Park," the letter reads in part.

The firm therefore, demanded that: "An immediate and unequivocal retraction of the publication by APC Kwara State, to disabuse the mind of the public as to whatever misrepresentation the publication might contain. Such rebuttal should enjoy, as a minimum, similar prominence of place as the original publication. "An immediate undertaking that you shall not cause to be published, any form of falsehood against Mrs Saraki.

"An unreserved apology to Mrs Saraki for the publication of malicious falsehood against her person." The letter also explained that the records at the High Court, Ilorin, indicated that the case initiated by the Ilorin Emirates Descendants Progressives Union in 2013, which named Mrs Saraki as 7th Defendant along with the purported sellers and purchasers of the Ilorin Amusement Park, a claim which the Kwara State Government had, in 2013 denied, since been discontinued on 7th May 2019, at the request of the claimants. The court had also struck it out.

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