A Facebook user, Mubarak Abdullahi, popularly known as Sardaunan Samari, faces prosecution for allegedly sharing a forged letter purportedly written by President Bola Tinubu to the President of the United States.
Naija News reports that the Department of State Services (DSS) has filed three counts of cybercrime and defamation against him at the Federal High Court in Kaduna.
He has also been arraigned before a Chief Magistrate Court in Kaduna, which ordered his remand in a correctional centre.
The President’s Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, who disclosed the development on 𝕏 on Monday night, described the suspect as a loyal supporter of former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar.
Onanuga said Abdullahi was arrested on September 28 after posting the document on Facebook with the caption, “ATIKU IS COMING.”
According to him, the suspect confessed to sharing the fake letter and expressed regret.
“Mubarak admitted to investigators that he shared the fake document and apologised for his actions. The contrition was not enough,” he said.
The presidential aide stated that the DSS first arraigned Abdullahi before Chief Magistrate Court No. 10, Kabala Doki, Kaduna, which remanded him to the Nigerian Correctional Centre, Kaduna.
He said the Federal High Court had yet to fix a date for his arraignment.
Onanuga added that the DSS would continue to show that it had the “capacity to trace those engaged in circulating misleading information in cyberspace.”
Reacting, rights activist, Omoyele Sowore, accused the Tinubu administration of turning the secret police into a tool for silencing critics.
“How low will you go, #OfficialAPCNg and the #officialABAT regime? How on earth do you reduce a national security agency like the #OfficialDSSNG to a mere vacuum cleaner, deployed to sweep up dissenting voices in your inordinate ambition to subdue every citizen simply because you are afraid to face the Nigerian people and account for your disastrous reign?” he wrote on 𝕏 on Tuesday.
Sowore described the arrest as shameful and warned that those behind it would one day be held to account.
“Arresting a hapless citizen for posting a document online, sad! Shame on all of you! A day of reckoning is coming, when you too will be held accountable for your actions. That day is coming sooner than you think. Very soon!” he said.
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