The Media Office of Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the National Leader of the All
Progressives Congress, APC, has decried what it described as foul media
reports against the former governor of Lagos State.
A statement signed by Tinubu’s media aide, Sunday Dare, Tuesday, strongly
condemned the orchestrated media attacks on the APC leader, saying the
attacks were designed to drive a wedge between Tinubu and President
Muhammadu Buhari.
According to the statement, “In the last 6 weeks, the Tinubu Media Office
has monitored the stream of false, distorted media accounts written
against Bola Ahmed Tinubu. We have learned that there is a concerted,
willful campaign tagged, ‘Destroy the reputation of Tinubu and his
relationship with Buhari’. As part of this ugly plot to cultivate the
worst of lies against the national leader of the APC, several blogs and
online sites recruited to launch this smear campaign have manufactured
stories to advance this sinister plan to taint the public mind with gross
lies disguised as news reports and interviews.
“This campaign, now in full and desperate swing, involves a blatant
violation of the minimal standards of journalism and social media ethics.
Without conscience or any hint of a sense of morality, they lie in the
most outlandish fashion by attributing statements to Tinubu which he never
made. They concoct interviews that were never given and assert positions
that he would never hold or endorse. They go about putting words in his
mouth, contending that he was in places that he never was, and reporting
falsely his movements and meetings.
“They recently have trespassed another boundary of proper behavior by
engaging in cloning letterhead of the Tinubu Media Office and issue their
libelous statements under such letterhead. This filth is now being
circulated in the social media in a malicious attempt to tie him to the
Dasuki money. The writers of these lies willfully seek to mislead, confuse
and deceive the public.”
It further stated that “Such fallacious headlines such as ‘Reasons Why I
collected N9 million-Tinubu’ and ‘I will not return N9 million –Tinubu’;
‘I am afraid PDP will stop Buhari in 2009 – Tinubu’, are being paraded.
Try as hard as they can, the creators of these false tales and misleading
headlines will fail miserably. Their stories cannot stand up to the
slightest scrutiny. They are patently false and we condemn in the
strongest terms those involved in this anti-Tinubu racket. While these
fellows may think themselves cunning, they might have outwitted their very
selves. In writing these stories, they have committed clear libel. In
abusing the media office letterhead and name, their misrepresentations
amount to forgery. They laugh now but walk on thin ice. Soon, that ice
will break and they shall have nothing but the weight of their wrongdoing
to blame for their predicament that will soon come.
“The individuals behind the plot are mostly scared PDP elements frightened
by the Buhari Anti-corruption campaign. They direct these falsehoods at
Tinubu in the futile mission of trying to drive a wedge between the
president and Tinubu, to disrupt the progress being made against
corruption and to destabilize the APC. But their PDP is already something
by-gone, buried under the mass of its corruption and wrongdoing. They
fight for a cause that has no cause. They are mercenaries of all the ills
and defects that the people want excised from our body politic. Thus, we
must do the people a public service.
“After identifying the bloggers and paid hatchet writers perpetrating
these wrongs, the Tinubu Media Office is taking the step to alert the
public to beware and be wary of hatchet writers, false prophets and paid
bloggers. The Tinubu Media Office has the names and online sites recruited
for this campaign and will not hesitate to make them know if they do not
desist from their negative mission.”