I’m not on social media – Pete Edochie
Veteran actor, Pete Edochie, is angry!
The thespian said even in this age and craze for social media, he
doesn’t have any account yet so many accounts have his name and so many
posts are attributed to him.
In a telephone chat with our correspondent, the actor said he was tired of people using his name falsely on social media.
“Right now, I’m watching football in my
house, but as I speak to you, some people are posting on Facebook or
Twitter, using my name and picture.
It’s either they are talking about
politics, state of the nation, ascribing series of proverbs to me or
using my name to counsel people about marriage.
Someone asked me how I
had time to put plenty proverbs on Facebook. I told the person I wasn’t
responsible for them and that I didn’t even have a Facebook account,
and she couldn’t believe it. Some people said I sat with Mourhino in one
of the profile pictures and that I was telling him the gods were angry
with him. Then, they posted another one that Buhari came to consult with
me in my shrine.
“From time to time, you would hear or
read that Pete Edochie died in London or on location. In our culture, if
people wish you dead, you’d attend the person’s funeral.
I’m satisfied
with what life has given me. I don’t envy anybody and I don’t want to be
anybody. I just want to be left alone as Pete Edochie.
“Somebody woke me up a few days ago and
pointed my attention to what was written in my name about (Senator Ike)
Ekweremadu. I was surprised.
I don’t know him neither do I have any
issue with him. Again, few days ago, it was also posted that Federal
Government needed me for something. All the nonsense people write about
me, I’m not happy about it.
“I’m not a politician, and I am not the
only actor in this country.
Throughout the campaign during the last
general election, I didn’t campaign for anybody, yet on the social media
you see people using my name to express support for one candidate or
the other.”
Edochie said what has saved him in all these is his command of English and his intelligence.
“I speak very good English, and those
posting those things in my name write in the way I can never write.
That
is the saving grace.
Just recently, someone informed me that he saw
somewhere in my name that I wrote on one of these platforms that people
should come and pay N50,000, as according to them, I was organising a
programme.
What programme?”
Edochie said he chose to keep quiet in order not to allow the false stories to continue.
“If you begin to reply to all of that
false information about you, you will make it a habit, and so anytime
you don’t issue a disclaimer on a particular post, they assume you are
the one speaking.
“Somebody told me he saw in the
newspaper that my wife supported me when I started acting and that I
divorced her when I started making money and I started running after a
girl whom they said I bought a car for. In the post, they even put the
number plate of the car, and that happened to be my wife’s car.
“During the Valentine’s Day, I was in my
house, but they wrote on the social media that I was in Lagos.
They
said they wanted to interview me, they knocked on the door but l was
busy inside.
Again, there was a time a boy from Kenya wrote on Facebook
that I was his father.
How is that possible? The boy did not even say
where I met his mother.
“There was a day I was sitting in my
house and I started receiving messages of sympathy, that they heard my
son had an accident and died while on set.
I just took my phone and
called him, and he told me he was on location, shooting a movie.
He came
to my house when he finished, whereas people had spread wrong
information around.”
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