TheCable

Oke Epia, publisher of OrderPaper Nigeria, has accused Tony Nwulu, a former member of the house of representatives, of threatening his life.

In a statement on Friday, Epia said he and his colleagues at OrderPaper have received threatening calls from Nwulu and “strange persons” some of whom refused to identify themselves.

He said the encounters with the politician started on July 21 when the former lawmaker posted “unwarranted, grave and unsubstantiated allegations of extortion and blackmail” against the organisation on social media.

According to Epia, Nwulu was miffed by a report of an “objective assessment” of his records at the national assembly.

Okpia said Nwulu should be held responsible if anything untoward happens to him or of his colleagues.

“Mr. Nwulu went on a binge of verbal attacks and was calling my colleagues and issuing threats with a promise to hunt us down at all costs,” he said.

“Given the wave of attacks against journalists in recent times, we have decided to bring this matter to the public domain and let the world know that should anything untoward happen to me or any of our colleagues or the media establishment itself, Mr. Nwulu should be held responsible.”

Citing Press Attack Tracker, which monitors attacks against journalists in the country, Okpia said at least 36 Nigerian journalists were attacked between January and July this year.

“So when we now have someone saying that he will hunt us down, we need to make the world aware even though we have initiated appropriate steps to seek legal protection and redress both for ourselves and the reputation of our organization,” he said.

“And for the records, we stand by our story and insist that records available since the publication have further corroborated our reportage.”

TheCable could not initially reach Nwulu for his reaction but he later called to narrate his own side of the story.

He accused Epia of blackmailing him, saying he had already informed the police.

The ex-lawmaker said OrderPaper accused him of spending millions of naira meant for a constituency project but he asked them to provide evidence to back up their accusation but they could not.