.APC kicks, says move to muzzle opposition
Osun State Government has expressed worry over what it described as pervasive fake news in the state.
It, therefore, stressed the need for all stakeholders to be deliberate in addressing the menace.
Consequently, the state government said it had set up a cybercrime action committee to give effect to relevant provisions of the law concerning cybercrimes, cyberbullying and deliberate online false news.
A statement signed by the state’s Commissioner for Information, Kolapo Alimi, yesterday, said that the step became necessary to sanitise the governance space and ensure that politicking and governance take place under an atmosphere of responsibility, decency and honesty.
The statement stated that the increasing wave of fake news negatively affects both the government and the opposition and that all operators should be brought within the compass of the law in the exercise of their rights as guaranteed by the Constitution.
Alimi said the committee has journalists and legal practitioners as members, adding that the mandate is to ensure that fake news is nipped in the bud, no matter who the perpetrators are.
He stressed that the committee would apply relevant sections of the Cybercrime Act of 2015 as operational clauses to ensure that all stakeholders operate within the law.
Meanwhile, the Osun State chapter of the All Progressives Congress has said that the setting up of the committee was a ploy to muzzle the voices of the opposition and subsequently turn himself into a dictator in a supposed democratic government.
The state’s APC Chairman, Tajudeen Lawal, in a statement by the party’s Director of Media and Information, Kola Olabisi, described the move as an afterthought aimed at “planting fears in the mind of patriotic citizens who are bent on knowing why Governor Adeleke chose to award over N50billion public road contracts to cyber cafe operators, fertiliser distributors and cronies with no technical and professional competence to execute road projects.”
“It defies logic that a governor who has been shielding from arrest his chief propagandist, who is being wanted by the Department of State Services (DSS) for allegedly planting fake news about the son of the Minister of Marine and Blue Economy, Femi Oyetola, is the one touting to curb cyber bullying.
“The issue is that Adeleke is under pressure to defend his corruption-friendly government which has become a butt of jokes among discerning minds in the state.
“If not, why is this repressive move coming up at this time when our party took him headlong on the shady deals that bedeviled the award of his purported multi-billion road/flyover contracts?
“We want to assure Governor Adeleke that no matter his antics, we, as a party, would not surrender our inalienable rights to act to type as a credible opposition to his reactionary and clueless government, in the overall interest of the people of the state,” he said.
