Understanding the press release on Warri COVID-19 videos

By Etolor Anslem


More often, individuals with ulterior motives are carried away in the frenzy of trying to drag public officials without firstly doing due diligence. If you objectively read the whole of the press release with the intention of seeking information on what transpired in warri two days ago, you won’t be writing several articles calling on the commissioner for Information to apologize to deltans for providing what u termed ‘false information’ because, in the entire release, there is no part that is inaccurate or false.
The right information was provided, but some people were not patient enough to digest the various segments of the release. Let me for the interest of the public try to break them down.

1. “The concocted videos were not a true representation of happenings in Warri or any part of Delta in the last 48 hours.”

There are several videos online showing military men killing civilians and also retaliation from the civilian population. Those who have followed events over the past 72 hours know for sure that those videos are far from the reality on ground in Warri and such videos have the capacity to heighten the tension in the city which might lead to reprisal attacks and distort the peace in Delta.

2 “Aniagwu stated that the purported video of two military personnel threatening the residents of Warri was an arrangement of those who didn't want the peace of the state, adding that the video was not a true representation of Nigerian military officers who knew the implication of threatening citizens with such an illicit video.”

From the above quoted, the commissioner did not say they are fake soldiers, but you could see that he said it is not a true representation of the military who knew the implications of such threats on citizens. Its important to state that no government will sit back and allow security agents molest its citizens.


When you see a caption on any news story, don’t make conclusions on the headline without reading through the entire story.

The body of the story provides further information because there were lots of videos about the Warri incident which were aimed at inciting the military and the civilian population.

Delta state government and its agents do not propagate fake news. We don’t stand to gain anything from distortion of truth on any subject matter because it doesn’t represent what we are known for.

Those who know Charles Aniagwu very well can attest to the fact that he is a man of details who doesn’t respond to trivial issues but is more interested in keeping deltans informed on the activities of the government.

Let us continue to support the efforts of the state government in trying to keep our people safe from the dreaded COVID-19 virus by staying at home and obeying government’s directives on restriction of movements within the state.