Governor Simon Lalong of
Plateau State has dismissed as laughable, malicious, mischievous and a
figment of the writer’s imagination, a story credited to an online media
outfit, MegaNews, alleging that he was recently duped of the sum of
five billion in Dubai in an attempt to buy property there.
Reacting to the
allegation, the Senior Special Assistant to the Governor on Media and
Publicity, Mr Mark Longyen, in a statement on Monday, described the
story as a “mere piece of thrash and sheer balderdash that should at
best be pooh-poohed with a wave of the hand and consigned to the dustbin
of oblivion or simply ignored by reasonable people.”
The Governor’s Spokesman
stressed that “ordinarily, the Governor would have ignored such
gargantuan and malicious falsehood which, if read between the lines, is
clearly the handwork of his detractors and opposition political
elements desperate to paint him black, but has chosen to respond to it
in order not to give traction and credibility to such brazen falsehood
and to clear the air for the sake of some gullible members of the
public, who might innocently swallow this bait hook, line and sinker.”
Longyen warned that
running an obscure online media outfit like Meganews was not a cover or
outright licence for the said medium and opposition political elements
to hide under it and conspire to attack and malign the reputation of a
serving Governor, adding that such defamatory and libellous stories
carry legal consequences, which the culprits may soon face.
“The Governor, therefore,
denies this wanton, malicious and mischievous report in its entirety
and challenges the authors of the story to produce and publish
documentary evidence, if any, from the records of their investigation
and show proof as to when and where the five billion naira Dubai
property transaction took place, which bank was used, as well as all the
parties involved, failing which they will face the music as relevant
security agencies will be called in to investigate the source of the
story,” Longyen said.
The Governor’s media aide noted that the online platform’s
allegation that the Governor lost the whopping sum of N5billion of
public funds to fraudsters, “according to the information being
discussed openly in public centres, and the said amount was intended for
the procurement of choice property for the Governor in Dubai,” was most
ridiculous and laughable and indeed the worst kind of armchair
journalism, lacking in credibility, objectivity, balance and fairness,
which are the basic ethical tenets or requirements for what can be
passed as a story.
The statement further
wondered what kind of a professional journalist would credit the source
of his story to information he/she claimed to have only picked “from
an open discussion at a public centre,” if the author is not a quack and
a harbinger of a hatched job aimed mainly to impugn the integrity of
the governor and bring him to disrepute.
He, therefore, admonished
the general public to beware and not fall victims of such malicious
reports emanating from such unregulated online media outfits that may be
sponsored and disseminated by past government officials who are being
investigated for corruption, whose sinister motive is to take the state
back to the dark days of its recent past that was characterised by
wanton corruption, intermittent chaos, conflicts and crises.
Signed.
Mark Longyen
SSA To The Executive Governor on Media and Publicity.
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