Former Military President, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, IBB, has distanced himself from a statement accredited to him on X.
IBB was quoted to have said that Nigeria had the best years
under military, and that democracy made things worse for the nation.
He denied the comments in a statement from the IBB Media
Office signed by Alhaji Mahmoud Abdullahi.
The statement read, “Our attention has been drawn to a post
on a parody account on X, formerly known as Twitter, which carries the handle,
@General_Ibbro, in which former President Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, GCFR, was
supposed to have endorsed the virtues of military rule over democratic
governance.
“This dubious account carries our principal’s picture and
name, and the coat of arms of the Federal Republic of Nigeria for added effect,
but it does not belong to him, nor does the former President sanction any post
appearing there.
“In the past, and more famously during the presidential
elections last year, it posted a blatant falsehood that the former President
had endorsed a particular presidential candidate and his party, thereby causing
public confusion and some embarrassment to the elder statesman.
“We want to state, unequivocally, that neither the Twitter
or X account, which is essentially a parody or pretend account, nor the
statement made therein, ever belonged to the retired General.
“General Babangida truly believes that the era of military
intervention in Nigeria’s politics is long gone and he has said how proud he is
that the Nigerian military has stood firmly behind multiple democratic
governments in this country since 1999, thus giving us the longest run of
civilian administration since independence.
“The user of this unfortunate parody account, which we
gather was traditionally supposed to be an account that imitates or at least
mirror the sentiments of the original twitter or X account that it copies, has
serially chosen to use the account to undermine democracy and spread stories
capable of causing animosity.”
The statement advised the general public to ignore any post
from the X account that purportedly claims to represent IBB’s opinion adding,
“Sadly, there seems very little we can do to make the overseers of X or twitter
to remove or sanction the tiresome account.
“In future, we sincerely hope that our media practitioners
and social media users will be more discerning and make the necessary efforts
to get confirmation before sharing messages attributed to former President
Babangida on X on any social media platform.”
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