Daily Independent newspaper has issued a retraction on he story alleging Nigeria’s Minister of Com­munications and Digital Economy, Sheikh Isa Pantami is placed on US Terror watch-list for ties with Boko Haram and Al Qaeda.

The statement by the medium reads in full:

Dear Readers,

Several concerns have been raised with respect to the veracity of the story alleging Nigeria’s Minister of Com­munications and Digital Economy, Sheikh Isa Pantami being placed on Terror watch-list for alleged ties with the late Boko Haram Leader Muhammed Yusuf in our publication.

We launched an independent audit to evaluate the story and found that there was no direct attribution by the said United States Government agency and we do apologise to our readers for re-publishing the report and also to the person of Sheikh Isa Pantami, Nigeria’s Minister of Nigeria’s Minister of Com­munications.

The video embedded in the story where the Minister and the late leader of Boko Haram revealed that, the minister and the late Boko Haram leader were in a heated debate. Sheikh Pantami in the video disagreed with Muhammed Yusuf’s position, insisting that Muslims should enrol in schools and equally participate in democractic governance. However, Yusuf argued to the contrary with little evidence from the Qur’an and Hadith which he relied on.

As an organisation, we always aspire to perform our due diligence in publishing or re-publishing third party articles with credible media organisations and in accordance with the highest ethical and professional guidelines and for this story, we found that story was published by Daily Independent without attribution.

Based on this development, we are retracting the story and deleting the article from our platforms, news websites and the various social media pages.