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More Nigerians and groups on Tuesday faulted the endorsement of Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate, Mr. Peter Obi, by former President Olusegun Obasanjo.
Apart from Benue State Governor Samuel Ortom and Ijaw National Leader, Chief Edwin Clark, who supported Obasanjo’s endorsement, most other Nigerians saw the ex-President’s backing as an aberration.
The Director of News and Special Media Project of the ruling All Progressives Congress Presidential Campaign Council (APC-PCC), Femi Fani-Fayode, warned that a vote for Obi is capable of leading the country to its second civil war and eventual break-up of Nigeria.
In an article, titled: What Have They Done To Our Baba? Fani-Kayode stressed that “something has gone wrong”.
The former Aviation Minister in Obasanjo’s administration regretted that the decision to endorse Obi was the former President’s greatest political mistake in the last two decades.
He noted that the endorsement of the LP candidate has greatly diminished Obasanjo and left him wide open to severe bashing and unprecedented criticisms and insults from all fronts.
Cautioning the electorate against voting for Obi, the APC chieftain alleged that Obi’s campaign strategy is creating clearer and deeper fault lines of division and potential conflict.
Fani-Kayode said: “A clear example is his refusal to condemn the brutal killing and killers in the Southeast, known as unknown gunmen, who kidnap and murder anyone and everyone, including our security personnel.
“Peter says he refuses to condemn these barbaric creatures and cruel beasts because he does not know who they are.”
Delving into global history, he wrote: “Like Peter, Adolf Hitler started in a similarly charming, humble and alluring manner, hiding his true colours long before he wormed his way into power. By the end of it all, Germany, and indeed the entire world, paid a heavy price for their folly.”
Also, the presidential candidate of the African Action Congress (AAC), Omoyele Sowore, described Obasanjo’s endorsement of Peter Obi as an “endorsement of failure”.
In a statement on Monday via his Facebook page, the Sahara Reporter publisher described Obasanjo as an overrated Nigerian ruler.
“Obasanjo’s repeated endorsement of @Peter Obi shows once again that the overrated three-time Nigerian ruler fetishises the ruination of Nigeria.
“(It’s) Failure endorsing failure. For us, we crave and are satisfied with the endorsements of the people,” he said.
Also, a former Secretary General of Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), Chief Anthony N. Z. Sani, described the endorsement, like that of 2019, as a mere opinion of the former President.
In a statement yesterday in Kaduna, he said: “Former President Obasanjo has been using letter writing to sitting Presidents and Nigerians as means of his politics through which he has arrogated to himself the status of conscience of the nation.
“But since he tore his PDP membership card as a way of retiring from partisan politics only to join ADC and later endorsed former Vice President Atiku Abubakar for 2019 elections, things have not been the same for Obasanjo again.
“As a result, most Nigerians now believe the only thing consistent about former President Obasanjo is inconsistency…”
Also, the leadership of Patriotic Youth Front of Nigeria (PYFN) carpeted Obasanjo for asking Nigerian youths to vote for Obi in the February 28 presidential election.
In a statement yesterday in Abuja, the youths’ group said it vehemently rejected Obasanjo’s imposition of the LP presidential candidate.
PYFN President Maxwell Orga said the former President is unfit to advise Nigerian youths.
It added: “We find it necessary to call out former President Obasanjo for his double standard and attempt to scam Nigerians as to his true identity.
“The same Obasanjo, who ceremonially shredded his PDP membership card as he swore off politics, has now appointed himself the Labour Party’s chief.”
The group listed many “sins” Obi has committed, including his failure to condemn the killings by the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and “unknown gunmen” in the Southeast, his preferential treatment for Catholics, among others.
“We also wonder if Obasanjo is unaware of Peter Obi’s ethno-sectarian bigotry that saw him only favouring Catholics and his clan members as the governor of Anambra State. If Obasanjo was unaware of this ugly side of his ‘mentee’ then he definitely cannot play the ostrich in the ugly matter of the expose in the Pandora Papers, including how Obi invested Anambra State’s money in his family business. These behaviours certainly are at variance with Nigeria which the youth are yearning for,” PYFN said.
Nation
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