The APC Presidential Campaign Council (PCC) announced that it has discovered a rogue website created by the opposition party to propagate false and damaging material against Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the party’s presidential candidate, six days before Nigeria’s presidential election.
The website’s address is http://www.igbotimesmagazine.online.
In a statement released on Sunday, Bayo Onanuga, Director of Media and Publicity for the APC PCC, claimed that the council had recently discovered a malicious website. Citing its most recent false report, the website claimed that some EFCC agents had raided Tinubu’s “underground home” under the direction of President Muhammadu Buhari.
“It claimed that N400 billion of the new notes was recovered from there. The story, which notably lacked the essential “when, where and how” ingredients of any news story, went viral.
“The EFCC has since issued a formal statement on the purported raid by its men as a fake story the public should disregard,” it said.
The dubious website, according to the council, claimed investigations were still ongoing into which bank manager gave such money to Tinubu. However, the website later admitted its own absurdity when it stated that the money found in Tinubu’s “underground house” was equivalent to “the entire money printed for the whole Nigeria” by the CBN.
“So, 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 President Muhammadu has ordered the arrest of the bank manager that made the phantom money available to the APC candidate.
“In a previous post two weeks ago, the site had claimed that ‘an angry mob blocked N3 billion of new notes heading to Tinubu’s house’.
“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. It credited the misleading news to Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the Minister of Information and Culture.
“We want to warn Nigerians to be wary of every piece of news emanating from the site, and its social media handles.
“There will be many of 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,” the council said.
In the lead-up to the election on February 25, which the opposition candidates, notably Peter Obi of the Labour Party, are sure to lose, the APC PCC said that the website was created with the intention of misleading and deceiving the public and disseminating harmful material about Tinubu.
“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.
“We urge the authorities to fish out the people behind the site, that is recklessly dishing out fake news, before more damage is done to our polity,” it stated.
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