El-Rufai vows to prosecute Chocolate City Boss Audu Maikori

Kaduna State governor, Nasir El-Rufai, has insisted Music Executive, Audu Maikori, will be prosecuted over his false tweets on Southern Kaduna attack. Maikori was arrested on February 17th for tweeting that five students of the College of Education, GidanWaya in Kaduna state, were ambushed and killed by herdsmen while on their way back to school yesterday January 22nd, a claim that he later found out to be false and apologised.

 Governor Nasir El-Rufai said that  Maikori must suffer the consequences for sharing the false information at the Lagos Social Media week yesterday. He said; 

"Audu Maikori rushed to publish a false story without checking with anyone. But before then, he had been posting fake pictures by posting Boko Haram attacks, Rwanda genocide as Southern Kaduna killings which elicited a lot of emotions on social media. But more than that, what he posted may have led to killings and we are trying to link the dates of the posting to attacks that may have happened the next day on Fulanis and if we are able to establish that causation, as lawyers, we know what it means.

It is totally irresponsible to do that. And even when pointed out to him that this information is not true that the College of Education does not run a mass communication programme and that the school had been closed down since November, he still posted that he stands by his story. He questioned the authenticity of the press statement. He was totally and completely irresponsible. He is going to be prosecuted. He was arrested. His statement has been taken. His fate will be decided by a judge. Its not Nasir El-Rufai. Its nothing personal.

I have nothing against him. He has worked with the state government in the past. Since we started going after people that are posting these fake pictures, we have had some sense of moderation. You cannot rush and use a platform like that without checking becaus ethere are two sides to this conflict because anything you post can elicit a reaction from one of the sides. So we should at least be sure that what we are posting is true.

And there are ways of checking, call the police or other authorities. You are rushing to get retweets and followings without regards to the fact that what you are doing could lead to more violence or loss of lives. I am the governor of the state. I am not in this game to get following. My responsibility as governor of the state is to ensure the security of lives and property of the state and I will not allow anyone, even my own son, to do that kind of thing without consequence".