Civil Society Groups have opposed the nomination of Mrs. Lauretta Onochie as a National Commissioner of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC.
The groups in a petition submitted to the National Assembly noted that “Onochie has been identified by some media houses as one of the Nigerian politicians who used fake news as campaign strategies online.”
Giving a breakdown of fake news that was posted by Onochie, it was revealed that, “in September 2018 Mrs. Onochie tweeted a picture of an asphalt road being constructed with the caption “Nasarawa-Jos Road” painting the picture that it was a road constructed by the federal government; this turned out to be false.
Mrs. Onochie acclaimed Nasarawa-Jos Road constructed by the governmentThe picture was a stock photo uploaded to Getty Images in November 2015. The embarrassing inaccuracy prompted the trend #TweetLikeLaurettaOnochie.
“Mrs. Onochie in December 2018 shared an image of former President Obasanjo with a quote credited to him “The money Atiku stole when he was my vice is enough to feed 300 million for 400 years”.
“In another vein, Mrs. Lauretta Onochie in February 2019 uploaded a Facebook status screenshot that said “Atiku becoming president is like hearing that a former armed robber is now your bank manager” – OBJ (My Watch, page 49)”.
“A fact check by the International Center for Investigative Reporting (ICIR) indicates that there was no time that former President Obasanjo made such direct statements in any of his books.”
The groups noted that “these quotes were deliberately fabricated by Mrs. Onochie to score cheap political points.”
It was also revealed that “in April 2019, Mrs. Onochie shared a picture with her followers in which she praised the then Borno State governor, Kashim Shettima for launching “Africa’s biggest Automated Solar Panel manufacturing plant”. This tweet was shared by over 500 users and liked by over 1300 people.
“Investigation, however, established that the picture that was not only credited to senior airman Larry E. Reid Jr (Staff Sergeant in the US Air Force) but was over 11 years old and shows a solar power plant in Las Vegas in the US.
“The whole tweet attributing the power plant to the then APC governor of Borno State was utter falsehood.”
Also, “in September 2018, Mrs. Onochie tweeted 4 pictures on her Twitter handle claiming that they were low-cost housing projects in the FCT, funded by the Federal Government.
“However, one of the pictures was first uploaded in April 2014 by the Lagos State Home Ownership Mortgage Scheme. The second picture is of a bungalow at the Sir Michael Otedola Housing Estate in Odoragushin, Lagos. The third picture dates back to at least 2016 and it has been used in articles about housing projects in Malaysia, Guyana, and Kenya.
“The ICIR traced the last picture, to affordable housing that was planned for Revelstoke in British Columbia, Canada. None of the four pictures, therefore, show housing projects in the FCT, Abuja.
The groups thereafter noted that it will be innocuous to state that the nomination of an individual as INEC’s National Commissioner who as in the instant case has habitually demonstrated unabashed partisanship should be outrightly refused and rejected by the Senate.”