The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, has warned Nigerians to be wary of the All Progressives Congress, APC, and the Federal Government over the information from them ahead of the 2019 elections.
The leading opposition party said the ruling party had already mobilized to commence the release of fictional and false performance indices with a view to swaying Nigerians ahead of the elections.
Accusing APC and the government of regularly churning out fake news, PDP advised them to seek forgiveness from Nigerians.
The party said the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, should lead the government and APC to do the needful, instead of alleged lame attempts at whitewashing the government and his party.
“Nigerians are aware that the phenomenon of fake news exploded to the current frightening proportion in Nigeria due to the desperation of the APC, whose spokespersons deliberately promoted outright lies, hate speech, insults and threats of violence as tools to gain political power, during the run-up to the 2015 general elections.
“The APC and its officials literarily fouled our media space by deliberately entrenching falsehood, fabrications, uncouth language and abuses as “acceptable’ modes of engagement, particularly in the social media.
“The APC and the Buhari Federal Government misled and have been misleading the media and the public by stating outright lies, half truths and fabrications in their statements and claims about governance, individuals and the opposition,” PDP said in a statement issued by its National Publicity Secretary, Mr. Kola Ologbondiyan.
PDP said the lies of the ruling party could be seen in the alleged several false performance claims about economic recovery and infrastructure development.
“Recently, the APC purveyed fake news in its declaration of President Buhari as winner of APC presidential primary with fictitious 14.8 million votes, even when there was no contest and no ballot cast.
“The deliberate deployment of fake news by the APC in its attempt to smear the PDP and its members, ended up demarketing our country in the international arena and eroded the confidence the world had on our markets and business concerns, resulting in the current dearth of investments, collapse of businesses, job losses and drop in national productivity,” the party said.
PDP said APC should be remorseful and realise that their use of fake news had devastated the nation’s economic, political and social development by triggering fear, public panic and uncertainty; disrupting production, distribution and marketing chains and weakening foreign and local investors’ confidence in our system.
