Nigerians are raising concerns over famous blogger, Linda Ikeji’s, news report of a certain attack on an office of the telecommunications giant MTN, by aggrieved Nigerians.
In her blog post shared on Twitter, Ms. Ikeji reported the incident using a photo from another incident, which happened in 2015. The photo was from a fire incident that happened at MTN Main Office, Illorin. It has no relationship whatsoever with the recent Xenophobia attacks as opposed to Ms. Ikeji’s report.
Soon after the publication of the said piece, much more Nigerians approached companies like MTN with links to South Africa to protest the Xenophobic attacks. In some instances, properties were destroyed. The chain of event has led to speculations that Ms. Ikeji’s report was a motivation behind the “reprisal” attacks.
Some were of the opinion that the reportage was an intentional act by Linda to instigate xenophobic attacks by Nigerians against South African businesses in Nigeria while others blamed the blogger for being unprofessionalism and insensitivity. However, Ms. Ikeji appeared to remain unshaken and has not responded to the claims made.
Attacks after the report included an invasion of MTN Nigeria offices in Uyo and some parts of Lagos. Shoprite Nigeria received its own share of the xenophobic attack as its branches in Lagos experienced severe lootings.
Nigeria’s largely semi-educated population relies heavily on blogs like that of Ms. Ikeji for News as not much is known of professionalism, sometimes even from the well established media houses with professionals.
Ms. Ikeji, who fancies herself a gossip blogger has been in series of mess relating to spread of fake news.
In 2018, the 38 years old blogger decided that season journalist John Abayomi is the owner of Instablogger; a viral Instagram page. This apparently pitched Abayomi against his employers as he was at the time an Online Editor for The Punch Newspaper.
Other Instances of fake news regarding the Attacks
Ms. Ikeji is however not alone. Singer Tiwa Savage in her own response to the crisis claimed that Nigerians are being butchered in South Africa. Former Minister of Aviation, Femi Kayode, has also made several publications including the ones in which he claimed Nigerians are being killed “like chickens”. Yet no death has been recorded. Mr. Kayode went ahead to threaten South Africans and South African companies, saying had he been President, none of them will feel safe in Nigeria.
A picture of a tank explosion in Tanzania also circulated as a picture of a number of Nigerians burnt to death.
Another video of an alleged armed robber being burnt to death went most viral gathering hundreds of thousands of views and retweets. This is despite this video (View HERE) appearing on TimesLive of South Africa as early as January this year.
