The Rivers State Government has accused defeated presidential candidates of being behind the spread of fake news against Governor Nyesom Wike. According to reports from Naija News, social media has been flooded with fake news and old messages related to the Governor of Rivers State.
On March 2, there was a false report that the Governor’s only son had been shot dead in California, United States, which was later debunked.
Rivers State
The Rivers State Commissioner for Information and Communications, Chris Finebone, released a statement on Sunday accusing defeated presidential candidates of using fake news to deceive Nigerians about Wike. Finebone stated that a preliminary investigation by the state government revealed that opposition social media workers were responsible for the scheme.
The commissioner stated that the opposition’s modus operandi is to unearth outdated fake videos that have already been discredited, alter them, and pass them off as genuine and current. He added that the opposition had changed an old audio clip from 2016 and shared it as a new clip involving the governor and another person to smear the governor’s image before the last presidential election.
Finebone also stated that after being defeated in last Saturday’s presidential election, they angrily posted another false news report on the internet claiming that the governor’s son in the United States had been gravely harmed – a lie taken from the pit of hell since the governor has no child in the United States.
The Fake News
Moreover, he accused them of producing more fake news after the presidential election, stating that they took an old video clip from February 26, 2019, in which Col. Aminu Iliyasu, the then Deputy Director, Army Public Relations, 6 Division, Nigerian Army, Port Harcourt, made spurious allegations against Gov. Wike following the faceoff between the governor and the Army over the governor’s courageous resistance to the military that was bent on rigging the 2019 governorship election in favour of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
The Rivers State Government condemned their activities as shameful, criminal, and evil. They also stated that the opposition has taken this old video clip, edited it out of context, and spread it on social media to depict the governor as someone planning to compromise the military for the upcoming governorship election.
