The APC PCC spokesman called on INEC to invoke the relevant sections of the 2022 Electoral Act to sue ThisDay and any other medium that commits flagrant violation of editorial rules to the courts.
By Jeffrey Agbo
The All Progressives Congress (APC) Presidential Campaign Council (PCC) has demanded an apology from ThisDay newspaper over a fake report about the death of a medical doctor, Kolapo Akande.
Akande, who was the husband of Lola Akande, a Commissioner in Lagos State died recently.
The campaign council’s director of media and publicity, Bayo Onanuga, said in a statement on Sunday that the report denigrated Akande and APC presidential candidate Bola Tinubu, accusing them 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 United States.
“But it was all false. ThisDay wrote a mere fiction and had relied on a false tweet by one David Hundeyin,” Onanuga said.
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He described Hundeyin as a hatchet writer and a so-called investigative journalist who identified himself as a Peter Obi, the Labour Party presidential candidate supporter.
The director added, “ThisDay should be truly ashamed of its ethical standards. It descended so low that even the David Hundeyin said to be desperate for asylum in the United Kingdom 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.
“We have waited for the past 48 hours, hoping the paper will show some remorse and apologise to 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.
“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.”
The APC PCC spokesman called on INEC to invoke the relevant sections of the 2022 Electoral Act to sue ThisDay and any other medium that commits flagrant violation of editorial rules to the courts.
Last week, Obaigbena’s Arise TV was fined N2 million by the NBC over a false report on INEC investigating drug allegations against Tinubu.