By Desire Emmanuel
Senior Special Assistant on Public Communications and Social Media to the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nyesom Wike, Lere Olayinka, on Saturday, April 4, said his boss did not mean to shoot Channels Television’s presenter, Seun Okinbaloye, saying he only spoke figuratively.
Wike came under heavy criticisms after he said at a media chat on Friday that if he has his way, he would shoot Okinbaloye over his comments regarding the political situations in the country.
However, defending his boss in a statement on Saturday, Olayinka said “the minister never meant that he will shoot Seun Okinbaloye. They even spoke on the phone today, and he (Okinbaloye) understood what the minister meant.”
According to Olayinka, what his boss meant was that he was angry seeing Okinbaloye, whom he holds in high esteem as a journalist, descending into the political arena by speaking as an interested party instead of an interviewer.
He added that the minister was primarily using exaggeration to make a point.
The statement reads: “The minister never meant that he will shoot Seun Okinbaloye. They even spoke on the phone today, and he (Okinbaloye) understood what the minister meant.
“What the minister meant, which he made clear during the media chat, was that he was angry seeing Okinbaloye, whom he hold in high esteem as a journalist, descending into the political arena by speaking as an interested party, instead of an interviewer.
“The statement made by the minister was in a hyperbolic context, which was clearly without intent. It was primarily using exaggeration to make a point.
“Even after the minister made the clarifications on the live television programme, which had Chamberlain Uzor, Head of Channels Television’s Abuja Office as part of the interviewers, all the journalists who were interviewing him just laughed.
“Therefore, after the minister’s detailed explanations of what he meant, including saying on the live television programme that he didn’t mean that he will carry gun and shoot the television anchor, it will become a clear hatchet job for any individual or group to pick the statement out of context and make any issue out of it.
“The public is therefore urged to discontenance the use of the comment as instrument of blackmail and propaganda by those whose intent is to misrepresent facts for their political gains.”
