Reno Omokri/File
Presidential spokesman Garba Shehu has described former Presidential aide Reno Omokri as a “lying” pastor.
This was in response to Omokri’s assertion that he imposes himself on any government.
Garba wrote in an essay that “I worked in the media office of a PDP administration. Not for five years as the new-day pastor published but only for six months at which point it was announced on NTA news, to my surprise, that my letter of resignation had been accepted when I hadn’t written any.
“I learned of course that I was fired because the head of the country at that time, who believed that every published criticism was sponsored by an insider, read the weekly magazine, The News, and didn’t like what was written about him.
“Another point the “Pastor” keeps making is that he was my colleague at that time. No, he wasn’t. His boss was. The Reno I knew was a Personal Assistant (PA) to a Principal Officer like me. He didn’t attend meetings and didn’t receive official briefings as we did but ran errands for his boss.
“Not being a principal officer by status, he could not have had an office opposite my own. He may, however, have perched on a stool in one of those offices but I didn’t take particular notice of which one. He was, however, very personable at that time.
““Pastor” Reno lied by calling me an AGIP – meaning an unprincipled person ready to serve any government in power.
“The period he was referring to was one in which my boss ran into bad political weather and some of us around him were scapegoated.
“I was locked in DSS detention many times, my houses in Kano and Abuja broken into and valuables, including cash some of which were never returned were seized.”
He called on “Reno [to] stop lying, if only to help the pastoral calling to retain its good name. Otherwise he should quit the ministry.”