Wike’s aide clarifies comment on Channels TV’s Okinbaloye
BY STEPHEN GBADAMOSI
The Senior Special Assistant on Public Communications and Social Media to the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nyesom Wike, has clarified one of the comments made by the minister during yesterday’s media chat on Channels Television’s Seun Okinbaloye’s programme, saying he only spoke figuratively.
The aide, Lere Olayinka, in a statement on Saturday, said; “the minister never meant that he would shoot Seun Okinbaloye. They even spoke on phone today; and he (Okinbaloye) understood what the minister meant.”
“What the minister meant, which he made clear during the media chat was that he was angry seeing Okinbaloye, whom he holds in high esteem as a journalist, descending into the political arena by speaking as an interested party, instead of an interviewer.
“The statement made by the minister was in hyperbolic context, which was clearly without intent. It was primarily using exaggeration to make a point.
“Even after the minister made the clarifications on the live television programme, which had Chamberlain Uzor, Head of Channels Television’s Abuja Office, as part of the interviewers, all the journalists who were interviewing him just laughed.
“Therefore, after the minister gave detailed explanation of what he meant, including saying on the live television programme that he didn’t mean that he would carry gun and shoot the television anchor, it will become a clear hatchet job for any individual or group to pick the statement out of context and make any issue out of it.
“The public is, therefore, urged to discountenance the use of the comment as instrument of blackmail and propaganda by those whose intent is to misrepresent facts for their political gains,” he said.
