Late Nigerian political sage, Obafemi Awolowo's owned Nigerian Tribune, has fired a senior reporter for concocting an interview with a constitutional lawyer and scholar.
Senior reporter at the Tribune, Olakunle Timothy Taiwo
A senior reporter identified as Olakunle Timothy Taiwo, has been sacked by the Nigerian Tribune, a newspaper owned by the family of late Obafemi Awolowo, for concocting an interview with Itse Sagay, a constitutional lawyer and scholar.
Edward Dickson, the publication’s MD/Editor-in-Chief, confirmed Taiwo’s sack in a response to a text from SaharaReporters who had earlier sent a text asking the MD to confirm the authenticity of information that the paper was about to issue an apology to Sagay and to formally retract the report based on a non-existent interview with the legal scholar.
The Tribune’s MD said he was at the newspaper’s annual general meeting and therefore could not offer further comments on the forged report. However, another source at the paper revealed that an editor had also been fired early today over the same scandal.
In a widely circulated report in the paper’s online edition, Taiwo claimed that Sagay had reportedly berated President Muhammadu Buhari’s anti-corruption war.
However, in an interview yesterday with SaharaReporters, Sagay, who chairs President Buhari’s advisory team on anti-corruption, denied that he granted any interview to the reporter or the Tribune. He also challenged the reporter and newspaper to provide proof that he spoke to them.
According to reports, the Nigerian Tribune is one of the newspapers named as beneficiaries of a payout from funds that were meant for the purchase of weapons to fight Islamist insurgent group, Boko Haram.
The revelation of a widespread dole-out of cash to media groups, including the Tribune, is part of a growing financial scandal involving former National Security Adviser, Colonel Sambo Dasuki (rtd.) who is accused of diverting more than $2 billion budgeted for the purchase of weapons for the Nigerian military.