The All Progressives Congress (APC) Presidential Campaign Council (PCC)/has demanded a full apology from ThisDay Newspapers and its publisher, Prince Nduka Obaigbena for the utterly unprofessional report against the Presidential candidate of the party, Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu.
Bayo Onanuga, Director, Media and Publicity, APC Presidential Campaign Council started this in a statement to protest the alleged campaign of calumny against the party and its presidential candidate.
Onanuga in the statement stated that ThisDay newspaper carried its campaign of calumny against the presidential candidate, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, saying the organisation went too far on Friday, with a fake report about the death of a respected medical doctor, Kolapo Akande, who was the husband of Lola Akande, a Commissioner in Lagos.
It read, “The report denigrated Kolapo Akande and Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, accusing the duo of being involved in the 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 U.S
“But it was all false. ThisDay wrote a mere fiction and relied on a false tweet by one David Hundeyin, a hatchet writer and so-called investigative journalist, who has identified himself as a Peter Obi supporter.
Any reasonable publishing house ought to be wary about any information coming from such a biased person. But not ThisDay. Anything that portrays Tinubu in a very bad light is fair game, as such a report will justify the tons of Naira that accompany it.
“The report has, however, turned into a huge embarrassment for the paper and further dented its credibility and integrity. ThisDay should be truly ashamed of its ethical standards. It descended so low that even the despicable David Hundeyin, said to be desperate for asylum in the UK, 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, but my information now is that Dr. Kolapo Akande who just died is the elder brother of Mueez Adegboyega Akande, (who is still very much alive.) As such I’m taking down my earlier tweet with the ThisDay story link”.
