Former Information and Culture Minister, Lai Mohammed, has recounted how his wife asked him to make her a signatory to his bank account following a widely circulated report in 2017 claiming that he had US$1.2bn in the account.
Mohammed said his wife made the request to prepare for any eventuality arising from the allegation.
He spoke on Wednesday while delivering a public lecture titled, ‘Fake News, Disinformation and Artificial Intelligence: Defending Truth and Public Trust in the Digital Age,’ at Caleb University, Lagos.
The former minister explained that the false report forced him to spend time convincing his wife that the claim about him having US$1.2bn in his bank account was entirely untrue.
He said, ”there was the widely circulated report alleging that I had US$1.2 billion in my bank account. I rebutted it publicly in April 2017, at the annual conference of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations in Ilorin, describing it as fake and vicious. At the exchange rate then in use, the sum was about ₦400 billion. I pointed out that my ministry’s entire annual budget, covering salaries, overheads and capital projects, was under ₦15 billion, so that even if I somehow transferred the whole budget into my personal account, it would take 25 years to accumulate such a sum.
”One night, my wife woke me and spoke to me in Yoruba. She said, in effect: “Daddy, we all know that death can come at any time. We may hope it will not come early, but it may. Whatever happens, it would be good if you made me one of the signatories to your bank account, to prepare for any eventuality. Even my friends and many other people are already asking me for money after seeing the report about the huge amount in your account.”
He also reflected on the potential damage the misinformation could have caused to their decades-long marriage if his wife had not believed him.
”I had to take time to explain that the report was entirely false, and that my ministry’s annual budget was only a fraction of the amount alleged. Imagine what such a falsehood could have done to decades of marriage if my wife had not believed me. The anecdote is amusing in retrospect, but it also demonstrates how disinformation can invade private life, damage relationships and create consequences well beyond public debate.”