Facts have emerged on the reason a Sun newspaper staff, Mr Ebere Wabara, was dragged to an Umuahia Magistrate’s Court over “criminal sedition and defamation” against the Abia state government.
The was government’s lawyer, Barrister Chukwunyere Nwabuko, said the problem of Wabara is not only the “outrageous, defamatory and seditious” publications he made through the Sun, but also the publications he made every day through the internet.
Nwabuko said: “What he fails to do through the Sun newspapers, he does through the internet, disparaging the government, inciting the populace to take up arms against Abia state government, causing disaffection and discontempt against the person of the state governor, and against the persons of his family members to the extent that he does so in so many of his internet publications which he funded and write in his own private name.”
He added, “In one of such publications, Wabara alleged the governor’s son ordered the killing of one of his aides, which is imaginary and portraying the governor’s son as a murderer; while in another publication by him, he stated that Governor T. A. Orji kills or kidnaps any person who refuses to sell land to him.”
Nwabuko called on the federal government to check the activities of online reporters.
