He said he regretted his action and should have been more circumspect in his postulation over such sensitive national security issues.
A former Minister of Aviation, Femi Fani-Kayode, has expressed regrets over the purported military coup comment he made where he alleged that the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, was secretly meeting with the Nigerian Army generals.
He said he regretted his action and should have been more circumspect in his postulation over such sensitive national security issues.
Fani-Kayode stated this at a press conference on Monday shortly after he was grilled by the operatives of Department of State Security (DSS) in Abuja.
The APC Presidential Council member and Director of New Media said he actually did not accuse anyone, but raised posers over alleged meetings between the PDP presidential candidate and military chiefs.
He insisted that his intention for raising the alarm was to ensure that the authorities were on top of their game and investigate Atiku.
While narrating his experience with DSS Fani-Kayode said, “I was subjected to very thorough grilling, they were inquisitive and it was very professional, at the same time I must say they were polite, reasonable, rational. Though it was quite an ordeal, I felt I was treated fairly, I was not oppressed. They were not acting on the orders of the Peoples Democratic Party."
In the course of the investigation he said that he realised that his position regarding a phantom coup plot by anybody for that matter was untenable and regrettable.
He said he agreed with his interrogators that he should have sought clarification on the matter through the back channels available to him rather than rush to the social media. He admitted that his action gave credibility to an otherwise fake news that had no basis at all.
According to him "Sometimes we need to be circumspect because the medium that issued that statement was faceless and of course when I say something on my Twitter handle, it is the whole world that is listening and apparently what I said sent shock waves in a lot of places and some people were really hurt. And I think it is regrettable, and it was a mistake. And I was the first to acknowledge that when things are not done in the right way.”
"On the issue of being circumspect, sometimes when you are at a warfront, your decision and judgement sometimes become jaundiced by what is referred to as fog of war. In other words in a struggle or fight.
"And this is a fight, it is a war, politics is a war by other means. So all of us are in a middle of a war.
"You may say the right thing at the wrong time and wrong thing at the right time, if there's anything like that. Look, nobody is infallible, nobody is infallible the most important thing is you learn from your mistakes. When it comes to national security, we all need to be exceptionally careful."