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President of the Senate, Senator Godswill Akpabio, has petitioned the Department of State Services (DSS) over an alleged anti-North statement purportedly attributed to him and circulated on Facebook and other digital platforms.
In the petition signed by his Chief of Staff, Chinedu Akubueze, Akpabio urged the security agency to urgently investigate what he described as the creation and coordinated dissemination of a false, inflammatory and divisive statement attributed to him.
The statement, contained in a graphic bearing the photograph and designation of the President of the Senate, allegedly reads: “Northerners, You Will Be The Ones To Suffer The Most, If You Allow Tinubu To Lose The Election.”
Akpabio, however, stated that he did not make the statement, adding that there was no date, venue, speech, interview, video, audio recording, official statement or credible news report to authenticate the alleged quotation.
According to the petition, the graphic also carried no identifiable publisher’s mark or verifiable source and appeared to have been deliberately created and presented as an authentic quotation to deceive the public, provoke regional resentment against the Senate President and portray him as threatening the people of Northern Nigeria.
The petition further stated that a preliminary examination of publicly accessible Facebook records identified some of the earliest traceable amplifiers of the alleged fabricated graphic.
Those named included Abdullai Musa, who allegedly posted the graphic in a Facebook group identified as “Sheik Muhammad bin Uthman Group 24,” and Uzoma Chilaka, whose Facebook post allegedly reproduced the graphic alongside commentary credited to Boniface Uzoma Chilaka and Engineer Ibrahim Umar Ammar.
The petition noted that the individuals should not be presumed guilty before investigation, but described their alleged early and substantial roles in circulating the material as making them persons of interest.
It urged the DSS to investigate their publication records, devices and communications, as well as the provenance of the graphic, to establish the identity of its designer, original uploader, sponsors, intermediaries and the network through which it was distributed.
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