Nigerian veteran actress Rita Edochie has expressed her frustration over the fake news spreading about her colleague Osita Iheme, widely known as Paw-Paw, being dead.
On December 12, 2024, the actress vented her frustration on Instagram in a thorough post that emphasised the risks of spreading misleading information.
“If one blogger and one hungry social media content creator hasn’t been mercilessly dealt with, the rest won’t learn,” she warned.
She condemned the spread of such rumours about celebrities and stressed that it has become out of control.
“This rumor has come up before. a couple of days ago, it came up the second time. pictures of my great son and veteran colleague osita iheme, popularly known as paw-paw, trended everywhere on social media with captions that they are dead—not him. crazy netizens believed the fake gist and began commenting “rip” on themselves,” she wrote.
Rita Edochie recounted that this was not the first time such falsehoods had surfaced about Iheme, as well as other Nigerian celebrities. She expressed concern over the motivations behind such posts.
She wrote, “I, as a person, think this is gradually going beyond control. this is not the first, neither the second nor the third time. it has become a recurring media practice by so-called bloggers and content creators. my question is this: why, in the name of god, would you wish untimely death on someone, especially nigerian celebrities, simply because you feel we are famous and can fetch you the traffic, engagements, and funds that you don’t deserve?”
Demanding a change, Rita Edochie stressed, “This is madness, and it must stop.you don’t have to grow your pages through death wishes on innocent heads. if we all die today as celebrities, na who una go come dey watch? gbonu ndi ala ndi ala?”
