Presidency threatens to prosecute those behind Buhari’s death rumour

- Presidency has warned that those peddling ‘fake news’ about the president’s health will be prosecuted

- Minister of Information, Lai Muhammed accused oppositions and those afraid of the president’s anti-corruption war as those saying the president is in critical health condition

The presidency has announced that it will investigate and prosecute those peddling rumours about President Muhammadu Buhari’s health.

The federal government is investigating sources of “subversive messages” on President Muhammadu Buhari’s health.

The presidency declared that those saying the president is dead will be made to face “the full wrath of law”.

Presidency threatens prosecute those behind President Buhari’s death rumour

According to The Nation, the minister of information, Lai Mohammed, on Wednesday, January 25 urges Nigerians not to panic and to ignore those ‘rumours’ about the president health as the president is healthy. Muhammed said the rumor about the president’s health is being peddled by those who felt threatened by the President’s anti-corruption war.

Muhammed said: “No iota of truth in the messages being circulated on the health of the President, who is hale and hearty, and the purported emergency meetings of the governors in Abuja or anywhere.”

He said the rumour mongers had also: “Resorted to the use of ethnicity and religion as tools to divide Nigerians, overheat the polity and cause panic among the citizenry.”

He said those behind the rumours are “using fake news and disinformation to distort government activities.”

Mohammed said in a statement: “While opposition and criticism are all part of democracy, the crafting and circulation of subversive materials and scare-mongering are not, hence the full wrath of the law will be brought to bear on those who are bent on subverting the state.

‘’The source/sources of the fabricated messages are already being investigated and the authors should prepare to face the consequences of their actions.

‘’The emerging trend of resorting to destabilisation and scare-mongering is not unexpected, considering this government’s clampdown on the corrupt elements in the society, the plugging of all financial leaks which has derailed the gravy train of the looters of public treasury and the enthronement of probity and transparency in the polity.

‘’While we will neither stifle press freedom nor abridge the citizens’ right to express themselves freely, whether through criticism or protests, the security agencies will neither allow any resort to violence nor a willful subversion of the state for whatever reason.”

The minister also told reporters after the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting the the rumour on the President’s health is a “silly thing”.

He said there were more pertinent issues to discuss in the country than indulging in irrelevances.

He said: “I don’t want to lend my voice to a very silly thing. I will not join this debate. I think there are more serious issues of state to discuss than this issue.

“It’s only in this part of the world that you wake up in the morning and you say the president of the country is dead. I will not join that kind of debate at all.”

Meanwhile, the former chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) board of trustees has condemned the rumour circulating that President Buhari was dead.

He said: “This attitude of doing false reports about the death of our leaders has become characteristic in the media and it is not good. I was a victim of this in May last year when I was reported to have died in a London hospital.

“Former President Ibrahim Babangida was also a victim of such sinister rumoured death last year. I wonder what those behind the false and mischievous reports intended to gain from them."