By Favour Nnabugwu
ABUJA-MINISTER of Transportation, Mr Chibuike Amaechi has reacted to blackmail reports against him, especially as he has asked an unidentified blackmailer to go to hell for asking him to pay him N5 million, saying he was too busy to attend to such a frivolity.
It will be recalled that in September last year; a blackmailer had requested that the Minister pay a total sum of N5m to stop a particular story against the backdrop that he, Amaechi did not attend to him.
The yet to be identified blackmailer who called one of the Minister’s friends to demand for a ransom of 5 million naira, days after the Minister had a private meeting with journalists covering the Ministry, continued with his threats to Amaechi that he would go public if he did not respond to him.
A close source of the Ministry told Vanguard that the Minister was angry with reporters assigned to the Ministry over the private discussions that had become a source of blackmail from one of the reporters.
The said meeting was meant for assigned reporters of the Ministry but several other journalists from print, television, bloggers and online media found their ways into the meeting.
Ameachi who was apparently betrayed over a friendly meeting where nothing was expected to be published, cut off from reporters in the Ministry for three months.
The balckmailer has been blackmailing the minister to pay for the recording or else he (blackmailer) was ready to quote him out of context and make the whole world discredit the Minister’s loyalty to the President.
On the issue that Mr. President does not read, Amaechi was actually stressing the fact that the President is focused on building infrastructures and does not care about all the negative things people write to distract him from his mandate.
“And come to think of it, the President does not have all the time to read the entire write up by journalists that is why he has a media aide. Our President is not an ordinary citizen.”
His real statement was, “Corruption is a problem in Nigeria. The problem is that everybody wants free money but one good thing is that under this administration there is no free money at all and people are not happy about that.
“One of my friends once told me that the solution to fighting corruption is to gather all the corrupt Nigerians and throw them into an ocean. This is because corruption has eaten deep into the fabrics of our society, everybody wants the easy way and you all know that when things like this have remained for a long time, it will not be easy to fight against.”
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