Ogun businessman petitions IGP: I’m not a gun runner

A businessman and hotelier in Ogun State, Ibrahim Dende Egungbohun, has petitioned the Inspector-General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun, demanding an investigation into a report, indicting him as a smuggler and gun runner.

An investigative reporter with the Foundation for Investigative Journalism, FIJ, Mr Fisayo Soyombo had in a report accused Egungbohun, popularly known as IBD Dende of running a smuggling syndicate in the state.

Egungbohun, in a letter by his lawyers to the IGP, described the report as malicious targeted at destroying his image.

The letter reads: “The publications and the documentary fabricated by Fisayo Soyombo in relation to our client, are false in their entirety and they excessively breached the decent fundamentals of public enlightenment which the freedom of Press is constitutionally about.

“It is, therefore, our client’s position that the totality of the documentary where our client’s name is criminally featured and the follow-up publications amount to nothing but character assassination with calculated view to achieve damaging effects against our client in his businesses within and outside Nigeria.

“It is also the position of our client that these orchestrated allegations are designed for the purpose of causing inconvenience, danger, criminal intimidation, enmity, hatred and needles anxiety to our client contrary to section 24 of the Cybercrimes (prohibition, prevention) Act, 2015.

“In light of the foregoing, we hereby request your office to cause the publications to be investigated with utmost urgency and seriousness, as they have implication not for the person of our client only but for the security architecture of our dear country.”