Imo denies plan to immortalise Kyari, says PDP behind false alarm

 

The Imo State Government says it does not have any plan to rename the Imo State University after President Muhammadu Buhari’s late Chief of Staff, Mallam Abba Kyari.

In a statement issued in Owerri on Monday Oguwike Nwachuku, Chief Press Secretary/Media Adviser to Imo State Governor Hope Uzodimma, the government said story circulating the social media, purporting that Governor Uzodimma wants to rename Imo State University, Owerri, after Kyari was false and handwork of PDP agents.

According to the governor’s spokesman, “The author(s) of the fake news had not only credited to the governor what he could not have said, but they criminally wrote the name of his Chief Press Secretary/Media Adviser, Mr. Oguwike Nwachuku, as the one who signed the purported statement.

“Since last weekend that Kyari passed on, the same persons have been issuing press statements, forging the logo of government and the name of Mr. Nwachuku with the intent to deceive Imolites in particular and the public in general into believing their propaganda and fake news to be real.

“Ordinarily, the blackmail by the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) through the two fake statements they credited to the Chief Press Secretary/Media Adviser to the Governor should have been ignored, knowing that no right-thinking person will believe them.

“In one of such fake statements they issued and also circulated on social media, they mischievously credited Governor Uzodimma to have said he would immortalise Kyari for ‘making him Governor.’

“How would any person believe the complete thrash that Governor Uzodimma will in a condolence letter say that the late Chief of Staff to the President made him governor of Imo State? Such a senseless and irresponsible blackmail!”

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Nwachuku said the fabricators of the falsehood ordinarily did not deserve the dignity of a refuter by his office.

“But the circumstances are not ordinary because it is about playing politics with the dead. It is sad to admit that the PDP has lost every sense of decency and fallen to the beastly level of denigrating the memory of the dead.

“One is not shocked, therefore, to notice that even in their desperation, the PDP could go so low to commit the sacrilege of dragging the name of a late distinguished statesman into gutter politics. This act of madness is both ridiculous and reckless beyond our imagination.

“We are not surprised at the level the propagandists of these fake news and their surrogates have descended, but concerned about how some people will elect to deliberately deceive the public with information they know is outright false and misleading,” he regretted.

Nwachuku flatly denied issuing the statements credited to him but accused the opposition PDP in the state for authoring same. “For the avoidance of doubt, let it be known that the two statements in reference were not issued by the office of the CPS/Media Adviser. They were fabricated and issued by the PDP and wickedly credited them to his office. We know exactly the person behind this and appropriate legal steps have been initiated to bring him to book,” he said.