President of the Senate, Senator Godswill Akpabio, has petitioned the Department of State Services (DSS) over a purported anti-Northern statement being circulated on social media and attributed to him.
In the petition signed by his Chief of Staff, Chinedu Akubueze, Esq., Akpabio urged the security agency to urgently investigate what he described as the creation and coordinated dissemination of a false, inflammatory and divisive statement allegedly credited to him.
The viral graphic, which carries the photograph and designation of the President of the Senate, attributes the statement: “Northerners, You Will Be The Ones To Suffer The Most, If You Allow Tinubu To Lose The Election.”
Akpabio, through the petition, categorically denied making the statement, stressing that no date, venue, speech, interview, audio or video recording, official statement or credible media report had been produced to authenticate the alleged quotation.
The petition further alleged that the graphic lacked an identifiable publisher or verifiable source and appeared to have been deliberately created and circulated to deceive the public, provoke regional resentment and portray the Senate President as hostile to the people of Northern Nigeria.
According to the petition, a preliminary review of publicly accessible Facebook records identified some of the earliest traceable amplifiers of the graphic, including Abdullai Musa, who allegedly shared it in a Facebook group known as Sheik Muhammad bin Uthman Group 24, and Uzoma Chilaka, whose post reportedly reproduced the graphic alongside commentary attributed to Boniface Uzoma Chilaka and Engineer Ibrahim Umar Ammar.
The petition, however, cautioned that the individuals should not be presumed guilty before investigation, describing them instead as persons of interest whose activities could assist investigators in tracing the origin and distribution network of the material.
It called for the investigation of relevant publication records, devices, communications and the provenance of the graphic, with a view to identifying its creator, original uploader, sponsors, intermediaries and others involved in its dissemination.
The petition was disclosed by Jackson Udom, Special Assistant to the President of the Senate on Media.
