Covid-19: Fake news purveyors to be sanctioned, Lai Mohammed says

The Minister of Information, Culture and Tourism, Alhaji Lai Mohammed has said that purveyors of fake news would be apprehended and sanctioned.

Mohammed said while fielding questions from newsmen at the Presidential Taskforce on COVID-19 daily press briefing on Wednesday in Abuja.

He said that security agencies were working to apprehend those behind fake news, adding that such people would be punished according to the law.

The Minister said that no nation would sit akimbo while its citizenry peddle fake news, stressing that the Federal Government would not allow fake news to thrive.

According to him, we will go after the merchant of fake news; those behind such news will soon be unravelled.

In a related development, the Minister of State for Education, Mr Emeka Nwajiuba has dismissed the report that the federal government had ordered the closure of school until November.

Nwajiuba said that the letter in circulation was fake, adding that if the ministry was going to issue any press release to that effect it would not be laced with grammatical errors.

He urged the public to discountenance the news, as there was no element of truth in it.

The statement earlier released by the ministry read, “the Federal Ministry of Education has disowned a press release circulating on multiple social media platforms insinuating that schools will reopen in November 2020.

The ministry described the press release as the handiwork of an illiterate who, going by the content appeared to be mental.

The statement asked parents, students and the general public to disregard the release in its entirety, as there was no iota of truth about it.