POLICE DIDN’T PRESSURE OUR REPORTER TO IMPLICATE SARAKI, SAYS PREMIUM TIMES MANAGEMENT

Penpushing recalled that, the fake report also quoted Ogundipe as saying he was tortured, but the reporter had promptly debunked the report, on his Twitter handle, stating that “at no time during my detention —not when I was first interrogated and told to write a statement before my Editor-in-Chief @Musikilu or at any other time during my three-day ordeal — did Saraki ever come up. I was only pressured to say my source, an unreasonable demand I rejected.”

However, despite Ogundipe’s rebuttal, the police believed the false narrative and went ahead to widely circulate a press statement reacting to the fake news, just as Premium Times in a statement described the police as the latest victim of the growing fake news syndrome, saying its reporter never made the claim attributed to him.

“By issuing a statement to respond to a false narrative, the police became one of the latest victims of the fake news syndrome. The truth is at no time during the interrogation of our reporter did police investigators pressure him to implicate anyone. All they wanted to know were the sources for his stories. The police also did not physically torture Mr. Ogundipe during his three-day ordeal in detention’, the statement emphasised.

The Management of the organization, however, posited that, “although we remain committed to fighting the latest onslaught on our reporters to a logical conclusion, we will do so with facts, decency and social responsibility. We will never accuse the police of offences they did not commit.”