Wilson Adekumola
The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed debunked the online reports alleging that he said INEC deliberately withheld the real-time upload of presidential election results from polling units.
Lai made the clarification on Wednesday in Washington DC in his response to the report published in some online platforms according to Vangaurd.
The minister said the report was a fake news, crooked by the online platforms to serve their mischievous interests.
“This is irresponsible and reckless journalism .
“The truth of the matter is that, one of the major problems in the polity today, is a section of the media.
“These are people who cannot just belief that the Labour Party or the opposition did not win the election.
“They convinced themselves that the All Progressives Congress (APC) will loose the election.
“As a result of this there is nothing you want to say or do, they will find a way to twist it and make it what they want it to look like,” he said.
Lai Mohammed stated that his statement was clear and it was wrong for any media platform to have manipulated it, to serve its own interest.
” What I said was that, during the election, there was a technical glitch and as a result of this and for INEC to protect the data, it suspended uploading of the results.
“INEC immediately set up a technical team to look into what went wrong and simultaneously floated another platform,” he said.
The state further that “Of course, Premium Times has its own agenda .
“They inserted the word “deliberately” and omitted the phrase that it was in order to protect the sanctity of the data.
“They make it to look like INEC deliberately refused to upload the results’.
Mohammed criticized the publication saying it was a most irresponsible way to practice journalism.
