Sex Scandal: US Ambassador Has No Evidence Against Lawmakers – Minister

[caption id="attachment_10197" align="alignnone" width="660"]Geoffrey Onyema, Minister of Foreign Affairs[/caption]

The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyema, on Thursday, said that the outgone United States of America Ambassador to Nigeria, James Entwistle has no concrete evidence against the three members of the House of Representatives allegedly involved in sexual misconduct in Cleaveland.

The three members facing allegations of sexual misconduct are Mohammed Garba Gololo (APC, Bauchi); Samuel Ikon (PDP, Akwa Ibom) and Mark Gbillah (APC, Benue).

Onyema, made the statement when he appeared before the House of Representatives Ethics and Privilege Committee and House Committee on Foreign Relations public investigative hearing in Abuja.

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The minister stated that Entwistle tendered an apology for breaching diplomatic protocol by writing directly to the Speaker, Yakubu Dogara, over the allegation instead of passing through the Foreign Affairs Ministry.

Testifying before the committee, the minister said the letter from the ambassador to the speaker was to tell him to caution his members not to behave in a manner that could jeopardise their subsequent participation in the programme and portray Nigeria in bad light.

According to him, the ambassador said that the house keeper in the hotel, who was allegedly grabbed by Mohammed Gololo, one of the accused lawmakers, had refused to testify before the American authorities.

He said that the ambassador said the evidence linking the lawmakers to the allegation was not as strong as the allegation itself.

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Onyema said: “I was surprised that the alleged complainant (house keeper) refused to testify when approached by her government.

“Regarding my meeting with the US ambassador, the first point I made to him was that he didn’t at any point notify the ministry about the matter and he said it was his failing and apologized.

“He said he deemed it fit to write a private letter to the speaker. I asked him what kind of evidence they obtained that emboldened him to write such letter, and that without evidence, it would amount to a defamatory act and that legal action could be taken.

“He said the hotel management reported the matter. The ambassador, however, did not present any corroborative evidence to me nor did he, indeed, indicate that they had any corroborative evidence because even the issue of identity, I understand, was based on group pictures.

“Yes it is confirmed that allegations were made obviously, but what he told me was that the housekeeper in the hotel refused to testify in respect of the matter which I was quite surprised to hear.”

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