By Rita Enemuru, Reporting
ON the second of March 2024, a verified X (formerly Twitter) user, @drpenking, made a claim of the governor of Abia State, Mr. Alex Otti, bragging about the plans he has for the state while calling governors of other states thieves.
According to Penking, Otti said that other Nigerians would throw stones at their governors by the time he was done working on Abia State.
The claim, posted on X as of Monday, March 4th, has gained 56.9k views, 346, retweets, 1.6k reactions and 136 comments.
Screenshot of the claim on X
While fact-checking the claim, Stonix News stumbled on other X handles such as Generation Football, Port Harcourt Socials and Emeka Gift Official – all verified accounts – have posted the claim gaining huge numbers of views and reactions.
The post read thus: “I have not done 5 per cent of the 100 per cent plans I have for Aba, I am here to shock Nigerians and tell them that their governors are all thieves, and by the time I am done working, you will stone your governor anywhere you see him.”
While fact-checking the claim, Stonix News combed the web to see if major news websites had published any news on it, but a search with the keywords did not yield any positive result.
VERIFICATION
Undone, Stonix News went ahead to contact the Chief Press Secretary (CPS) to the governor, Mr Kazie Ukoh, during the fact-checking process. He revealed that the claim was published and posted as news by one Emeka Gift Official on X.
The CPS graciously responded to Stonix News‘s request for verification if truly the governor made the statement by sending pictures of the claim with the tag “FAKE” on them.
Disclaimer from the CPS on X as sent to Stonix News
VERDICT
The claim that Governor Otti referred to other governors as thieves is not only false, but malicious, misleading and disinformative with, perhaps, the intent of inducing violence.
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