BY CLIFFORD NDUJIHE

Lagos— ELDER STATESMAN and leader of The Patriots, Professor Ben Nwabueze (SAN), has dismissed as false comments attributed to Senator Femi Okurounmu that he wrote President Goodluck Jonathan asking for a mandate to handpick delegates to prepare a draft constitution.

Quoting a media report where Okurounmu, chairman of the Presidential Committee on National Conference said he wrote the President to mandate to write a draft constitution, Nwabueze denied ever writing such a letter.

Saying the said letter existed in Okurounmu’s imagination, Nwabueze said the senator was “again baiting me to break my principle  not to make public statements impugning the character of people  that I do not know.”

His words:  “He(Okurounmu) was reported in the Leadership newspaper of  Wednesday 15 January, 2014 to have said :’”It was reported in the media that he actually wrote to the President that he should mandate him to handpick a handful of people and make them draft a constitution for Nigeria.’ He  was so certain that I wrote such a letter to have fired back at the press man interviewing him : ‘Are you aware that he wrote a letter to the President that the President should mandate him to handpick some people to actually prepare a draft constitution for Nigeria?’

“The press men should ask the senator whether he has seen or read the letter in question. I never wrote such a letter to the President. As Chairman of PAC, Sen. Okurounmu has access to the President. Instead of fabricating such unfounded story based on unverified newspaper report, which he apparently

misread, Okurounmu, as a distinguished senator and holder of the high office of Chairman of PAC, should go to the President and find out from him whether I ever wrote such a letter to him. To reiterate: I never did. The letter exists only in the figment of the senator’s imagination.”