Apurported ‘news story’ posted by a certain Ola Fapson on FACEBOOK early last week has got me into a perception calamity.It carried the “news” that former Governor Ikpeazu of Abia State has been condemned to death after being found guilty of corruptly siphoning the impossible sum of N1 trillion belonging to Abia state away to an impossible destination of Australia or New Zealand! Social media fiction does not come in a fatter dose!
I immediately saw this phantom ‘news’ as a typical example of what damage the social media could do if allowed unfeterred flowering in our media space. For me, here was an example of how fiction can graduate into fact for the ignorant. It needed to be shot down before fiction graduates into dangerous viral menace. I just thought the best thing to do is to share this ‘news’ as a joke so that we could laugh it out of existence.
First, where would Abia State find the spare 1 trillion? Which court sentenced the poor man into oblivion? There is no law in our books that stipulates the death penalty for corruption, common stealing in Nigerian parlance. Even if such a law existed, the investigation of such a mega crime would involve the Nigeria Police, the EFCC, the NSA’s office etc. Most tiers of the judiciary must have heard and ruled on the case etc. The case must have been headline news for months and years. I concluded that this was classic foolish social media humour that could entertain my fellow Facebook people. So, I decided to share the joke and silly humour on my page on Facebook so that I could get more dimensions of the humour! I did not want to laugh alone in these sad times!