Former Aviation Minister, Femi Fani-Kayode, has condemned Peter Obi and Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed for their comments and actions regarding the outcome of the presidential election on February 25th.
WITHIN NIGERIA reports that Obi and Yusuf Datti have maintained their position in rejecting Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s declaration as the winner of the 2023 presidential election.
The Labour Party (LP) Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates have claimed that the 2023 election was marred by irregularities and that they will seek to reclaim their mandate in court.
Recall that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declared Tinubu, the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), as the winner of the February 25th election, ahead of Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
Obi finished third in the competition. However, the two opposition parties have filed a legal challenge to the election results.
Reacting to Obi and Datti’s actions in the aftermath of the 2023 general elections, Fani-Kayode on Friday said;
Amongst the most dangerous people in Nigerian politics today are Peter Obi and Dati Baba Ahmed, with their army of ignorant, fascist, violent, uncouth, frustrated, garrulous, racist, bigoted, misguided, radical, brash and rebellious supporters.
The APC chieftain said he heard the Labour Party’s vice presidential candidate, Bola Tinubu, warn President Muhammadu Buhari and the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Olukayode Ariwoola, not to allow Tinubu to be sworn in because “lives would be endangered and the military would intervene.”
“Swearing in Tinubu is the same as inviting the military to take power,” Fani-Kayode quoted Yusuf Datti as saying on Channels Television.
He also quoted the Labour Party vice presidential candidate as saying that he would never accept Tinubu as President, that he had no faith in the courts or election tribunals, that the President was incompetent, that the INEC Chairman had conducted a sham election and was arrogant, and that the President-elect was a Pablo Escobar and Mayer Lansky-like drug baron rolled into one and the father of organized crime in Nigeria.
And Yusuf Datti Is Still Walking Freely?
Fani-Kayode said Yusuf Datti should have been arrested by this time after all that he has said, even on national television programs.
He said:
Even when the interviewer Seun Okunbaloye, as professional as ever, cautioned and warned him that his words and sentiments were unacceptable and that they breached the NBC regulations and the law he flared his Mauritanian nostrils, rolled his eyes, raised his voice and insisted on continuing, boasting that he feared no-one and that he had no apology for his intentions, assertions and views.
Instead of desisting from his attempt to incite Nigerians against constituted authority, democracy, the courts, the CJN, the Federal Government, the President, the INEC Chairman and the President-elect, he knuckled down and repeated his incendiary and dangerous words.
All this, and he is still walking around freely. I wonder whether he is above the law? If yours or anyone else from the BATIST camp had said those words and such things on national television, all hell would have broken loose, and we would have been invited by the security agencies by now.
We would also have been attacked and subjected to an insulting barrage of condescending, unsolicited, ill-informed, malicious and unwelcome advice by one or two foreign diplomats who had clearly forgotten their place.
What Obi, Dati, and their wild, uncouth and unruly supporters represent and seek to implement is nothing less than a dangerous and fascistic ‘Kaduna Nzeogwu agenda’ with all its attendant consequences, and they must be exposed, renounced, rejected and resisted by all lawful and constitutional means, Fani-Kayode noted.
According to him, Nigeria is a multi-ethnic, multi-religious, multi-cultural nation whose strength, beauty, and power lie in its unity, plurality, and diversity.
He added:
We must not let anyone divide us. We do not want or need a tribal President who seeks to subjugate and enslave all those that do not share his ethnic heritage or religious faith.
Worse still, we do not want a Vice President with a foreign heritage who really has nothing to lose if Nigeria is burnt to the ground and who can always run back to his father’s country.
These fascists came third in a free and fair election, even trailing Atiku Ibn Dubai and his People’s Destruction Party, yet they still claim to have won and have threatened to turn our nation upside down if they do not have their way.
It is within their ranks more than any other that the call for an ING and a truncation of the democratic process is loudest.
They say it and pronounce it on social and traditional media every day, and neither Peter nor Dati cautions them or even attempts to reign them in.
They and their foreign friends who are encouraging them from behind the scenes and whose diplomats insist on involving themselves in our politics and internal affairs are hell-bent on having their way, subverting the will of our people, destabilising our country and robbing the President-elect of his mandate.
Their thinking, like a jilted and bitter bride that has been abandoned at the altar by her groom, is that “if I can’t have it then no-one else will have it.