Lai Mohammed reiterated that social media remained the platform of choice for the purveyors of fake news, anti-state groups, anarchists, secessionists, terrorists and bandits.
Former Minister of Information and National Orientation, Lai Mohammed, shared a personal anecdote in Lagos during an event celebrating the 90th birthday of Africa’s first Nobel laureate for literature, Prof Wole Soyinka.
Mohammed highlighted the damaging impact of fake news, revealing how it nearly caused irreparable harm to his 40-year marriage. He emphasized the widespread consequences of fake news, misinformation, and disinformation.
“Permit me to share publicly with you today for the first time, how social media threatened the foundation of my forty-year-old marriage. It was sometimes in 2018 when I came to Lagos from Abuja for an official assignment. As usual, I retire to bed about midnight, but about 3:00 a.m., my wife gently roused me from my slumber. At first, I panicked, fearing that there had been a security breach, but my wife’s mind belied that possibility, for she was calm and composed,” the ex-minister said.
He added, “So solemnly, my wife asked me if I was fully awake as there were some serious issues to discuss. I could not fathom what was that urgent or serious to warrant being woken up at this time of the night. My mind immediately did a kaleidoscope of my rascalities and escapades in the last few months.”
Mr Mohammed said the accusation from his wife, which, according to him, was “bombshell” narrated to him in Yoruba, but roughly translated thus:
“Daddy, death can come knocking at any moment; please let me also, as your wife, be a signatory to your overseas account in Ali Financial, which contains $1.3 billion.’’
The former minister said he could not believe that his wife could take, hook, line, and sinker the fake story in circulation crediting humongous sums of money in overseas accounts to government functionaries and ministers under former President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration.
“I spent the next two hours or so sweating to convince my wife that there is no iota of truth in the allegation. I had to fetch a calculator and reproduce the Federal Appropriation Act for 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 in the middle of the night and explain to her why it is simply preposterous for me to have $1.3 billion in a foreign account.
“I explained to her that there is no year my capital budget exceeded N5 billion, which then, at about N400 to a dollar, was just $12.5 million. I explained that, even if I managed to divert every kobo of it to my personal account, it would take at least 104 years to save the sum of $1.3 billion being peddled that I stole,” he said.
Mr Mohammed added, “My wife insisted that the whole world believed the story and that her friends had, as a result, besieged her with all kinds of requests. She said every effort on her part to deny the existence of this foreign account only succeeded in depicting her in the minds of her friends as a selfish, greedy and uncaring friend.
“Is my wife truly convinced of my innocence? The answer is in the wind!.”
Mr Mohammed reiterated that social media remained the platform of choice for the purveyors of fake news, anti-state groups, anarchists, secessionists, terrorists and bandits.
