The office of FCT Minister Nyesom Wike has moved to contain the fallout from his threat to “shoot” Channels Television anchor Seun Okinbaloye.
Lere Olayinka, Wike’s Senior Special Assistant on Public Communications and Social Media, said in a statement on Saturday that the minister never intended physical harm against the journalist.
He said the remark was hyperbolic and that the two men have since spoken by phone.
“The minister never meant that he will shoot Seun Okinbaloye. They even spoke on phone today, and he understood what the minister meant,” Olayinka said.
He said the remark, made during a media parley in Abuja on Friday, was directed at Okinbaloye’s on-air conduct and not at the man himself.
“What the minister meant, which he made clear during the media chat, 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 said.
Olayinka described the statement as hyperbolic in context, saying it was “primarily using exaggeration to make a point” and was “clearly without intent.”
He also noted that Wike had clarified the remark on the live programme itself, with Chamberlain Uzor, head of Channels Television’s Abuja office, among those present, and that the journalists in attendance laughed at the clarification rather than treating it as a threat.
“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 a 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,” Olayinka said.
He urged the public to disregard what he described as attempts to weaponise the comment for political ends.
Wike had drawn widespread condemnation on Friday after saying, at the parley, that he was so angered by Okinbaloye’s remarks on Thursday’s edition of Politics Today that he would have “shot” him through the television screen.
The anchor had expressed concern about Nigeria drifting towards a one-party state while discussing the crisis in the African Democratic Congress following its derecognition by the Independent National Electoral Commission.
Wike said Okinbaloye overstepped by publicly declaring a personal position on the matter rather than maintaining the detachment expected of an interviewer.
“How can an interviewer say we cannot allow one-party state,” the minister said, adding: “I am not saying I will kill him. I am just angered that he made that kind of statement on a national television.”
The original remarks triggered immediate backlash on social media. Rights activist Rinu Oduala questioned whether any associate of the late military ruler Sani Abacha had ever made such a statement publicly, while popular X user Morris Monye criticised colleagues present at the parley for laughing along rather than defending Okinbaloye.
X user Kayode Ogundamisi linked the minister’s outburst to what he described as a broader pattern of anti-democratic behaviour by the ruling All Progressives Congress, while Facebook user Sulaimon Sarki called on both the Nigeria Union of Journalists and the International Federation of Journalists to treat the remark as a serious threat to press freedom.
The Punch
