Cowards by nature are both dubious and ambitious. A coward, when he has a correct message to pass, would gleefully announce himself as the bearer. But when he has a wrong and distasteful information to share, he struggles and sweats to pin the authorship on someone else. And as 2019 draws closer, cowards are beginning to come out of their hibernation to unleash fake news on the nation, all attributed to individuals who have attained dignity and reputation within their circumference of life.

Unfortunately, even in their game, the liars and cowards are never smart. It is the hallmark of intelligence for someone to tell believable lies, but when you lie against someone who has nothing to gain from doing or saying what you attribute to him or her, all rational and sound minds immediately see big question marks dancing all around your claim. Those who have no time for cheap gossips and useless rumors would simply ignore anything that bears the imprints of a coward slayer of reputation.

It is possible that the reader has come across the jejune writeup captioned, “Mohammed Abacha To Buhari: You Are The Change We Don’t Need” flying around the internet. Now, in the desperation of the writers to tie Mr. Mohammed Abacha to their nonsense, they even jettisoned the standard journalistic tradition of writing a byline once. As if to emphasize to the reader the need to bear in mind that it was ‘Mohammed Abacha’ who said what was attributed to him, the mischievous writer had to mention ‘Mohammed Abacha’ thrice as the author. Such level of desperation to tie a man who has never been known to be a political activist to a ‘political attack’ message is entirely devoid of creativity or common sense.

While many of the claims attributed to Mohammed Abacha in the writeup are baseless, the man himself has no political or personal reason to childishly attack President Mohammadu Buhari as the purveyors of falsehood want the public to believe. As far as Mr. Mohammed Abacha is concerned, President Buhari remains a father figure whom he reveres for his unmatched simplicity and legendary uprightness.

While we know those behind the fake report, we would let this pass. The only reason we are doing this rejoinder is to avoid a situation where a lie repeated and circulated may assume the colour of truth. However, should the merchants of lies fail to discontinue from their antics of linking Mr. Mohammed Abacha to their worthless efforts aimed at scoring cheap political mileage, we may have no choice but to announce and shame them publicly. In the meantime, we wish to inform the discerning members of the public that Mr. Mohammed Abacha did not and would never author any derogatory writeup on the person of PMB. The writeup under reference eminently qualified as a rubbish that we hope would be thrown in the thrash where all useless materials should go.

Muhammad Abacha Media Office