The All Progressives Congress (APC) Presidential Campaign Council has debunked a report that the ‘underground house’ of its presidential candidate, tinubou ballwas raided by the EFCC.
The story, which the EFCC has since debunked, also alleged that the anti-corruption agency allegedly acting on the orders of President Muhammadu Buhari found the sum of N400 billion at Mr Tinubu’s house during the raid.
The story was first published by an online platform, www.Igbotimesmagazine. online, which the campaign council called a fake news platform in a statement made available to reporters on Sunday.
The statement signed by Bayo Onanuga, the campaign council’s director of media and publicity, said the story was conspicuously lacking in the essential ingredients of “when, where and how” any news story went viral.
The online platform in the story claimed that investigations are still ongoing into which bank manager made that money available to Mr Tinubu.
The story also alleged that “the money recovered in the Tinubu ‘speak house’ is equivalent to ‘all the money printed for all of Nigeria’ by CBN.
However, the council asked that “if only Tinubu has all the money printed by Godwin Emefiele’s CBN, how do you account for the billions distributed by the main bank to all banks, including POS operators?”
The site, which on Twitter and Facebook appears to have links to the Labor Party, went further, in another post, to claim that Muhammadu ordered the arrest of the bank manager who made the ghost money available to the APC candidate, the statement said. noted.
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The online platform had previously claimed in a post two weeks ago that “an angry mob blocked N3 billion new banknotes headed for Tinubu’s house.”
The APC campaign council statement said other fake news on the site included one claiming that the federal government was planning to borrow money from the hijackers in Kaduna because they have more money than our country and blame Lai Mohammed for the misleading news, the information minister. and Culture.
The statement warned Nigerians to be wary of all 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 pursuance of dishonest opinion and manipulated.” surveys by the ANAP Foundation and Nextier, shying away from all decent norms and rules”.
“igbotimes magazine. online, with its affiliated social media identifiers, exists for no good of our country.
“Their aim is to misinform and mislead our people and spread malicious information about Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, in the run-up to the February 25 election, which opposition candidates, including Labor’s Peter Obi, are doomed to lose. .
“We are not surprised that the opposition has embarked on sponsoring a website and social media accounts, whose owners are unknown and lack a physical or even email address,” the statement said.
It alerted the authorities to uncover the people behind the site, who are recklessly distributing fake news before more damage is done to our politics.