The management of Abuja-based online newspaper, Premium Times, have accused loyalists of Rivers state governor, Nyesome Wike of creating a fake Facebook page using the name of their organisation.
According to the medium, the fake Facebook page calls itself Premium Times News and uses the logo and other creatives and styles belonging to them.
They alleged that the page peddles false stories and promotes dangerous propaganda, circulating them to an unsuspecting audience as if they emanated from them.
The page lists its address as 38 Forces Avenue, Old GRA, Port Harcourt, the same address as that of the Rivers state chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
According to Premium Times, the page started out as a Nyesom Wike support group, as they said the page’s permanent URL indicates, but it metamorphosed to its current status after the elections held earlier this year.
The managing editor of the online medium, Musikilu Mojeed, said his organization became aware of the fake Facebook page some weeks ago.
He said: “Our head of digital strategy immediately filed a formal report to Facebook but Facebook has failed to pull the page down since then, letting the mischief makers to continue spreading their falsehoods, using our identity.
“Premium Times has only two Facebook pages. The first is the English version and the Hausa version. Any other page claiming to belong to Premium Times brand is a pirated copy and should be disregarded.”
Meanwhile when a reporter from the medium contacted Wike’s media assistant, Sam Nwakaudu, he reportedly said: “This your blackmail is getting out of hand,” and terminated the call afterwards.
It will be recalled that Wike was sacked as the governor of Rivers state on Saturday, October 28, by the Rivers state election petition tribunal sitting in Abuja.
To compound Wike’s woes, Nigeria’s apex court, the Supreme Court, yesterday, October 27, dismissed the appeal of Wike regarding the tribunal’s relocation to Abuja and upheld the right of the court to relocate the case to a tribunal sitting in Abuja following the absence of a chief judge in Rivers state at that time.
0 comments:
Post a Comment