The government said this in a statement issued on Wednesday in Abuja by the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed.
“The source/sources of the fabricated messages are already being investigated and the authors should prepare to face the consequences of their actions,’’ the minister said.
According to Mohammed, the President is hale and hearty and there is no iota of truth in the subversive messages being circulated on his health.
He noted that there was no truth in the messages on the president’s health and the purported emergency meetings of state governors in Abuja or anywhere.
The minister urged Nigerians to disregard the messages being circulated via text messages and the social media, saying the fabricated messages were being orchestrated by those who felt threatened by the emerging order.
Mohammed noted that the naysayers had also resorted to the use of ethnicity and religion as tools to divide Nigerians, over-heat the polity, and cause panic among the citizenry.
“While opposition and criticism are all part of democracy, the crafting and circulation of subversive materials and scare-mongering are not.
“The emerging trend of resorting to destabilisation and scare-mongering is not unexpected, considering this government’s clamp-down on the corrupt elements in the society.’’
The minister said the scare mongering was because government had blocked all financial leaks, enthroned probity and transparency and derailed the gravy train of the looters of public treasury.
Mohammed said government would neither stifle press freedom nor abridge the citizens’ right to express themselves freely through constructive criticism or protests.
He, however, warned that “the security agencies will neither allow any resort to violence nor a willful subversion of the state for whatever reason’’.
NAN
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