Wike’s aide explains minister’s ‘shoot’ remark, says no threat to TV anchor

The Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Administration has moved to contain the fallout from a remark made by Minister Nyesom Wike during a live television interview, with a senior aide clarifying that the minister’s comment about Channels Television anchor, Seun Okinbaloye, was purely figurative and carried no threatening intent.

Lere Olayinka, Senior Special Assistant on Public Communications and Social Media to the FCT Minister, said in a statement on Saturday that Wike and Okinbaloye had since spoken on the phone, and that the journalist himself understood the context in which the remark was made.

“The Minister never meant that he will shoot Seun Okinbaloye. They even spoke on phone today, and he understood what the minister meant,” Olayinka said.

The clarification follows widespread public reaction to a comment Wike made during a Media Chat on Channels Television, hosted by Okinbaloye, in which the minister expressed visible irritation at what he perceived as the anchor stepping beyond the role of a neutral interviewer into that of an interested political party.

According to Olayinka, the remark was hyperbolic in nature — an exaggeration deployed for emphasis — and was never intended as a literal threat.

“The statement made by the Minister was in hyperbolic context, which was clearly without intent. It was primarily using exaggeration to make a point,” he said.

Olayinka further noted that Wike himself addressed the comment during the same live programme, explicitly stating that he had no intention of picking up a gun to shoot the television anchor.

He added that the other journalists present in the studio, including Chamberlain Uzor, Head of Channels Television’s Abuja Office, laughed at the clarification — a reaction he said underscored that no one in the room took the remark literally.

The aide warned against what he described as deliberate attempts to weaponise the comment for political purposes, urging the public to reject efforts by unnamed individuals and groups to misrepresent the minister’s words.

“It will become a clear hatchet job for any individual or group to pick the statement out of context and make any issue out of it,” Olayinka said. “The public is therefore urged to discountenance the use of the comment as an instrument of blackmail and propaganda by those whose intent is to misrepresent facts for their political gains.”

The incident has nonetheless renewed debate about the boundaries of political language in Nigeria’s public discourse, and the responsibility of public officials to exercise restraint — even in moments of frustration — when speaking before a national audience.