President Bola Tinubu’s administration is reportedly engaged in a covert attempt to discredit the Take-It-Back Movement, which has been supporting the call for the #EndBadGovernanceInNigeria protest.
The discrediting campaign is believed to be a strategic maneuver by the government to undermine the movement’s legitimacy and support base, as well as to dissuade potential protestors from participating in the demonstrations.
According to a report by SaharaReporters, the media outlet has discovered that the government has reached out to bloggers, offering them N750,000 per post to publish damaging content about the TIB movement.
A receipt obtained by SaharaReporters on Saturday confirms one such payment, exposing the government’s plot to undermine the protest.
“A video interview with News Central TV showing Sowore speaking from his New Jersey (US) base is being circulated across to bloggers and influencers from a Tinubu government’s agent in London to claim that he is calling for protests while not in Nigeria,” one of the bloggers offered money revealed to SaharaReporters.
“Someone actually paid me to post that Sowore’s video (video of his interview with News Central TV from the US). I know that they were paying for it to go viral. I charge N450,000 but the person even paid extra for it when I said no,” the source added.
Meanwhile, on Friday, the United Bank for Africa (UBA) had frozen the account of the Take It Back Movement over its involvement in the #EndBadGovernanceInNigeria protests.
The Take It Back (TIB) Movement has stated that its bank account was frozen at the behest of the Department of State Services (DSS), also known as the State Security Service. In response, the organisation has threatened to take legal action against UBA if the account is not unfrozen within 24 hours, citing the action as unlawful.
“It has now come to our attention that @UBAGroup has frozen our account on the instructions of the DSS over our involvement in the forthcoming protest.
“We describe this action as lawless, and demand our account be unfrozen immediately within the next 24hours, without which a legal action will be instituted against @UBAGroup,” it said in a post on its X handle on Friday.
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