Bola Ahmed Tinubu, presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), has called on the Nigeria Press Council (NPC) to take appropriate disciplinary action against Thisday and its Publisher, Prince Nduka Obaigbena over a report linking him to drug trafficking.
The APC presidential candidate also urged the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to invoke relevant sections of the Electoral Act 2022 to sue Thisday for flagrant violation of editorial rules.
In addition, he is demanding a full apology from the paper and Obaigbena for “the utterly unprofessional report.”
Director, Media and Publicity, APC Presidential Campaign Council (PCC), Bayo Onanuga, in a statement made available on Sunday, said ThisDay newspaper carried its campaign of calumny against Tinubu on Friday, with a fake report about the death of a respected medical doctor, Kolapo Akande, who was the husband of Lola Akande, a commissioner in Lagos.
According to him, “The report denigrated Kolapo Akande and Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, accusing the duo of being involved in drug trade.
“Not caring a hoot about the need to respect the dead, the paper painted Akande as a drug lord, who had ‘lived under the radar’ and had stayed aloof from people”. Unknown to ThisDay, their imagined ‘hibernating’ Kolapo was an Accord Party candidate for the House of Representatives some years back.
“But in the paper’s pursuit of its jaundiced, cash and carry journalism, it gleefully reported that Kolapo Akande was the same Mueez Akande mentioned in the shuttered 30-year-old drug investigation against our candidate in the U.S.
“But it was all false. ThisDay wrote a mere fiction and had relied on a false tweet by one David Hundeyin, a hatchet writer and so-called investigative journalist, who has identified himself as a Peter Obi supporter.”
Tinubu stated that any reasonable publishing house ought to be wary about any information coming from such a biased person.
He said: “But not ThisDay. Anything that portrays Tinubu in a very bad light is fair game, as such a report will justify the tons of Naira that accompanies it.
“The report has, however, turned into a huge embarrassment for the paper and further dented its credibility and integrity. ThisDay should be truly ashamed of its ethical standards. It descended so low that even the despicable David Hundeyin, said to be desperate for asylum in the UK, excoriated the newspaper for the report.
“Without sounding remorseful, Hundeyin recanted his tweet and wrote: “Not sure why ThisDay published such a story without confirming it, but my information now is that Dr Kolapo Akande who just died is the elder brother of Mueez Adegboyega Akande (who is still very much alive.) As such I’m taking down my earlier tweet with the ThisDay story link”.
According to him, “In his earlier full tweet, the reckless journalist, whose modus operandi is more like Alex Jones of the U.S. based Infowars had suggested that Tinubu masterminded Kolapo Akande’s death, quoting fictional ‘back channel sources’.
“What a wicked, unconscionable lie!”
“At the heart of journalism is the credo that a medium should seek to verify its information before dishing it out to the public. ThisDay, just like its sister Arise TV News, has now clearly shown that it does not operate by such standards.
“We have waited for the past 48 hours, hoping the paper will show some remorse and apologise to the Akandes and Asiwaju Tinubu over the malicious report. We are surprised it has not taken such a dignified step.
“We now formally demand a full apology from the paper and its publisher, Prince Nduka Obaigbena, for the utterly unprofessional report.”
The PCC called on the NPC to take appropriate disciplinary action against Thisday.
It also urged INEC to invoke relevant sections of the Electoral Act 2022 to sue Thisday for flagrant violation of editorial rules.
“We hope henceforth the paper will seek to be driven by the ethical ideals of journalism and not other material considerations. In view of the established evidence of violation of the core ethics of journalism, we demand that the Nigeria Press Council take appropriate disciplinary action against Thisday to save journalism at this sensitive period from the merchants of falsehood and abusers of the public trust that the press embodies.
“We call on INEC to invoke the relevant sections of the Electoral Act 2022 to sue Thisday and any other medium that commits flagrant violation of editorial rules to the courts.
“These are the only remedies to the reckless journalism of Thisday.
“They are the guarantees that the provisions of the Constitution mandating the Press as the Fourth Estate of the Realm shall be protected,” he said.