President of the Senate, Ahmed Lawan, has denied any knowledge or link with any job racketeering scheme over recruitment into the Federal government N-power scheme designed to cushion the impact of unemployment in the Country.
Lawan, in a statement by his media aide, Mr Ola Awoniyi, said the publication alleging underhand dealing between the office of the President of the Senate and the managers of the programme was baseless and false.
The statement said: “Attention of the Office of the Senate President has been drawn to a publication on the Sahara Reporters portal purporting that the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management allocated N-Power recruitment slots to the Senate President and other lawmakers
“We hereby advise members of the public to totally disregard the fake and malicious publication in its entirety as regards the Senate President.
“It should be noted that the fairytale only blandly and obliquely claimed that some lawmakers printed out application forms from the portal of the scheme but failed to provide any evidence that this was to fill its speculated allocated slots.
“We wish to stress that neither the Senate President nor this office has anything to do with the purported slots mischievously credited by the publication to the Senate President.
“We urge the media to always strive to be factual in their reports and abide strictly by the ethics of their profession which require them to hear from all sides and objectively establish the facts, especially before publishing accusations capable of damaging the reputation of public officials.
“Finally, we firmly restate that the story in reference is malicious and should be disregarded,” President of the Senate stated.