‘Obi-tuary’ article: Your supporters are threatening me, call them to order, Sam Omatseye tells Obi

Sam Omatseye, chairman of The Nation newspaper editorial board, has asked Peter Obi, presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), to call his supporters to order.

In a tweet on Tuesday, Omatseye, also a columnist with the newspaper, alleged that Obi’s supporters are threatening his life.

He said if anything happens to him, the LP presidential candidate should be held responsible.

“Mr. Peter Obi, call you[r] supporters to order. They are calling and issuing death threats. If anything happens to me, you will be held responsible!!!!,” Omatseye tweeted

Omatseye’s tweet comes hours after an opinion article he wrote entitled ‘Obi-tuary’, which was published in The Nation newspaper on Monday.

In the article, the columnist said Obi’s candidacy has turned out to be an excuse for “closet Biafrans to betray open emotions about Biafra without being accused of it”.

“This includes intellectuals who did not show mercy to him while he reigned in Anambra as a pharisaic chief executive. It is like wearing a colour beneath another colour. Obi has become a shelter for both miscreants and activists of the crowd,” the article reads in part.

“Obi knows this. He is happy to be their catharsis, to be their excuse for unfurling their bile at the system, for acting like revolutionaries.

“He is playing to it by acting as though he is the saint of Nigerian politics. Perhaps the purists of the Biafran cause are unhappy, and they unleashed a past video clip of Kanu on social media. In it, Kanu lashes out at Obi as governor and states what this essayist wrote about him over building a NEXT supermarket while still the governor of Anambra state.”

However, the article has elicited sharp criticism from supporters of the LP candidate, who have accused Omatseye of bias.