Minister of Power, Chief Adebayo Adelabu, has faulted a statement online attributed to him claiming that he had “accumulated enough money to never be broke again”.
Bolaji Tunji, the Minister’s Special Adviser on Strategic Communications and Media Relations said there was no occasion, public or private where the Minister made such remarks, adding that the claim was aimed at misleading the public and damaging his reputation.
In a statement, Tunji noted that the statement did not emanate from the Minister and should be disregarded in its entirety.
He further described the publication as part of a growing pattern of coordinated misinformation targeted at the Minister.
The false claim is coming on the heels of a recently circulated “resignation letter” by the Minister, which has also been exposed as fake, he said
Both incidents, he said, point to a calculated campaign of calumny designed to discredit the Minister.
“This is not an isolated attack. It is part of a sustained effort to malign the person and office of the Honourable Minister through the spread of fake news and deliberate falsehoods,” the statement said.
The statement linked the wave of disinformation to Adelabu’s rising political profile, particularly his reported interest in contesting the governorship seat in Oyo State on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
The intensified attacks were driven by political interests threatened by his growing influence.
