BY CHINYERE OBIORA, LAGOS – The Federal Government has accused the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) of cheap blackmail and circulating phony videos of mass killings to mislead the international community attract their attention.
Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed said that regrettably, these fake materials, harvested from other parts of Africa, are doctored to look real and current for the selfish reasons of achieving an ominous agenda against the Nigerian State.
This is even as the Minister amplified his earlier position that IPOB is being sponsored by a coalition of politically-disgruntled and treasury looters, as a dangerous political apparatus against the President Muhammadu Buhari-led government.
Addressing Online Publishers in Lagos on Monday, Alhaji Mohammed said, “We must warn the nation against IPOB’s next line of action, which is to externalize their lies and propaganda. Now, they are writing to the governments and the national parliaments of some Western nations to give the impression that they are victims of an ethno-sectarian violence orchestrated by the government, hence they need protection.
“Some of the tools that have been employed by IPOB include; blatant lies and cheap propaganda, and the medium of choice for the organization is the Social Media. IPOB has harvested gory videos and pictures from other lands and the distant past, which they are now circulating via the Social Media, to deceive the international community into believing that the people of the South-east are being subjected to state-sponsored, ethno-religious violence.”
According to him, “Such videos, which have very high emotive quotient, are circulating on the Social Media as we speak. These videos are doctored to make them look current. They are fake!”
The Minister said some ill-informed foreign individuals are already trumpeting IPOB’s lies and propaganda and even alleging genocide, adding: “It is either they do not understand the meaning of genocide or are being mischievous.”
He stated that, “Either way, there is nothing like genocide anywhere in our country today. What we have in the South-east is a clampdown on a band of lawless people who have no regard for the laws of the land.”
Alhaji Mohammed however sought the Online Publishers’ collaboration in countering and correcting the false and dangerous narrative on the Social Media as it relates to current events in the South-east geo-political zone.
“In the interest of the nation and your own interest, you must counter this fake narrative, report the issues responsibly and without sensationalism and present the truth to the public. If the Social Media, your platform, is discredited because of the activities of quacks and Internet Trollers, you too will be discredited and your publications will simply go down.
“That is why you must distinguish yourselves, as trained and tested professionals, from the charlatans, who have seized the Social Media by the jugular, those who have no regard for the truth and who do not care whether their fake posts set the nation ablaze,” the Minister charged the media chiefs.
