The Ebonyi State Government has reacted angrily to a trending video footage which purports that Governor Dave Umahi stood by and watched civil servants being flogged by soldiers at the entrance gate of the state’s Government House.
Recall that a video footage had gone viral, on Tuesday, showing Governor Umahi stood akimbo and watched soldiers brutalise some people at the front of a gate house.
But in a reaction to the footage by Commissioner for Information and State Orientation in the state, Hon. Barr. Orji Uchenna Orji, he rejected the footage in its totality, while giving a vivid account of what transpired there to be security operatives dealing with an attempt by those he called ‘miscreants’ trying to enforce IPOB-induced sit-at-home order at the entrance of the construction site of the Airport project in the state.
The statement read thus, “Our attention has been drawn to a doctored footage purporting to be civil servants rolling on the ground and being flogged by security personnel in the presence of the Governor of Ebonyi State while on inspection at the Government House Gate, in Abakaliki, as reported in SaharaReporters publication and shared widely in different social media platforms and accepted line hook and sinker by the gullible.
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“We wish to inform members of the public that the purported footage is a video manipulation of an aborted attempt by miscreants to block the Airport Gate and inflict fear on those working at the ongoing International Airport and possibly embarrass the governor who was on a routine inspection visit to the Airport project, in guise that they were enforcing sit-at home- order at the premises of the Airport, on Tuesday, 4th October,2022.
“It would be recalled that miscreants had in the past tried to attack those working at the Airport site and their plots were neutralised.
“Contrary to the fake report that the incident happened at the gate of the Government House, in Abakaliki, while the governor was on supervision, the miscreants were dispelled at the gate of the new Airport under construction.
“It is to be noted that no civil servants or employees whatsoever have been recruited to work in the Airport and so no civil servant was flogged at the Airport gate, contrary to impression in the trending report.
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“We are, therefore, surprised at the basis of the unintelligent fabrications of the mischief makers.
“There is no amount of blackmail that can distract the performing Governor of Ebonyi State,His Excellency Engr Chief David Nweze Umahi FNSE FNATE who had visited the Airport to carry out his routine inspection of projects as regular inspection of projects is one the reasons why we pride with quality assurance in our policy of monitoring and evaluation in Government businesses.”
The Commissioner urged residents in the state and the public “to discountenance the manipulated trending video as the handiwork of enemies of progress.”