By Sunday Ani
MINISTER of Youths and Sports Development, Mr. Sunday Dare, has denied media reports linking him with the Lekki Concession Company (LCC), describing it as a calculated attempt to tarnish his image.
There have been social media reports that the minister has been constantly benefitting from streams of income that accrue to the company.
But, a statement from the Minister’s Media Office, yesterday, described the story as false, a malicious slander and total blackmail.
The statement equally described the story as misleading, disingenuous and false, since it did not offer any fact. It, therefore, called on the public to disregard it even as it stressed that it was the handiwork of hatchet men who pose as social media journalists, as well as political jobbers and unscrupulous persons, who were acting the script of their pay master(s), aimed solely at tarnishing the hard earned reputation and good works of the minister.
Part of the statement read: “Let it be categorically stated that Mr. Dare is not a stakeholder (shareholder, director or contractor) in the LCC. He collects no proceeds from the LCC directly or indirectly as the malicious social media posts tried to suggest without an iota of fact.
The minister threatened to take a legal action against those pushing out the false reports if they did not come up to prove their allegation, lamenting that even though journalists, who engage in this kind of false and malicious reports are few, they give the media a bad name. The statement also urged the unsuspecting public to discard the fake news, even as it advised online media practitioners to embrace objective and investigative journalism to avoid causing unnecessary tension in the land.