The Presidential Campaign Council of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has debunked a report that the ‘underground house’ of its presidential candidate, Bola Tinubu, was raided by the EFCC.
The story, which the EFCC has since debunked, also alleged that the anti-graft agency purportedly acting on the orders of President Muhammadu Buhari found the sum of N400 billion in Mr Tinubu’s house during the raid.
The story was first published by an online platform, www.Igbotimesmagazine. online, which the campaign council has labelled a fake news platform in a statement made available to journalists on Sunday.
The statement signed by Bayo Onanuga, director of media and publicity of the campaign council, said the story notably lacked the essential “when, where and how” ingredients of any news story, went viral.
The online platform in the story claimed investigations are still ongoing as to which bank manager made such money available to Mr Tinubu,
The story also alleged that “the money recovered in Tinubu’s “underground house” is equivalent to “the entire money printed for the whole Nigeria” by the CBN.
The council however asked that ”if Tinubu alone has all the money printed by Godwin Emefiele’s CBN, how do you account for the billions distributed by the apex bank to all the banks, including operators of POS?”
The site, which on Twitter and Facebook appears to have links with the Labour Party, went further, in another post, to claim that Mr Muhammadu has ordered the arrest of the bank manager that made the phantom money available to the APC candidate, the statement noted.
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The online platform had previously in a post two weeks ago claimed that ‘’an angry mob blocked N3 billion of new notes heading to Tinubu’s house.”
The statement from the APC campaign council said that other fake news on the site included one that claimed the federal government planned to borrow money from kidnappers in Kaduna because they have more money than our country crediting the misleading news to Lai Mohammed, the minister of information and culture.
The statement warned Nigerians to be wary of every piece of news emanating from the site, and its social media handles, saying there will be many such sites as some candidates become desperate to win at all costs, “in fulfilment of some rogue and rigged opinion polls by ANAP Foundation and Nextier, shunning all decent norms and rules.”
“The igbotimesmagazine. online, with its affiliated social media handles, exists for no good of our country.
“It is out to misinform and mislead our people and disseminate malicious information on Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, in the run-up to the 25 February election, which the opposition candidates, including Peter Obi of the Labour Party, are bound to lose.
“We are not surprised that the opposition has embarked on sponsoring a website and social media handles, whose owners are unknown and which lacks physical address or even an email, ” the statement noted.
It alerted the authorities to fish out the people behind the site, which is recklessly dishing out fake news before more damage is done to our polity.
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