Sunday, July 21, 2024 -As Nigerians plan for a protest over the increasing cost of living in the country, the Special Adviser on Information and Strategy to President Tinubu, Bayo Onanuga, has alleged that the supporters of Peter Obi are planning to cause mayhem across the country and that the former Labour Party presidential candidate should be held responsible for anarchy.
Bayo made this claim in a statement he
released on social media today July 20. He wrote;
‘’REVEALED: Peter Obi's supporters are the
people planning mayhem in Nigeria: Obi should be held responsible for anarchy
Don’t
be fooled: the malcontents planning to stage nationwide protests are supporters
of Peter Obi, the failed presidential candidate of the Labour Party. And he
should be held responsible for whatever crisis emanates from the action.
The protest planners are also the
same people who were instigated by IPOB leader Nnamdi Kanu to launch the
destructive ENDSARS protest in Nigeria in October 2020. ENDSARS began as a
genuine protest by youths against the Police Special Anti-Robbery Squad,
notorious for its high-handedness. IPOB members planning to extricate the South
East region from Nigeria infiltrated the protest and hijacked it for their own
agenda. Lagos still bears the scar of the malicious destruction by IPOB
elements until today.
Two years after ENDSARS, the IPOB and
the gullible innocents joined the Labour Party in 2022 to support Peter Obi, a
sympathiser of their cause.
They are the people spreading the
hashtags 'EndBadGovernance', 'Tinubu Must Go,' and 'Revolution2024'. They are
not democrats but anarchists. They are attempting to call out our people via
propaganda because their Messiah, Peter Obi, failed to win the Presidency in
the 2023 election. As bad losers, they don't have the patience to wait for
another election in 2027; they would rather destabilise Nigeria by staging a
civilian coup against President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
If they understand the meaning of
their hashtags, they will realise they are clarion calls for treason. Wanting
to end an elected government is high treason. Wanting revolution is a call for
a coup d’etat, which is also high treason.
I have been on the trail of one of
the protest planners, who is nameless but claims to have an internet radio
station, PTM100.88 Abuja. The anonymous person joined X in August 2022 and has
520 followers today, among whom are FS Yusuf, another rabid Obi supporter, and
Professor Pat Utomi, a Labour Party chief and a guy on X who goes by the
pseudonym Peter Obi's First Son. PTM’s profile image has someone holding the
inscription` Certificate Forger Not My President, ' with a photo of Peter Obi
as an inset. Only Obi’s supporters will be talking about certificate forgery
long after the Supreme Court dismissed the allegation.
In the past 24 hours, this faceless X
user has been whipping up the gullible to join the protest being planned and
also posting the activities of his Messiah, Peter Obi. He retweets Peter Obi
often.
In one of the posts, a video shows a
teenager, who is said to be in the North, printing T-shirts emblazoned with
“EndBadGovernance in Nigeria 2024'.
There is also a retweeted post by
Babatunde Gbadamosi, a failed and frustrated politician in Lagos. In it, he
refers to his earlier post urging people “ to identify APC members, sponsors,
supporters, enablers, thugs, promoters, and appointees.” The police and DSS
ought to have arrested the man for making a brazen threat to political
opponents.
There is “General Oluchi,” a woman
who goes by the screen name “A Field Marshall of the Han Dynasty.”
She has been sending out letters of
mobilisation. She even pinned a “Week 6 “ letter urging Nigerians to wake up
and take control of their country, using the language of IPOB, Peter Obi, and
his supporters.
Another member of the malcontents is
Brother Bernard, also known as Mikael C. Bernard. He is not based in Nigeria
because he was once busted over Binance and fraudulent crypto businesses in
Nigeria. Bernard was the man who once wrote that the naira should go down to
zero.
In a reaction to Oluchi, he said the
protesters should remove the increase in salaries for the armed forces as part
of their demands.
“If they want an increment in salary,
let them launch their own protest. It is not our job to fight for enablers of
evil”, he wrote on X.
According to our law, men of the
armed forces don’t protest, an X user reminded him. He posted a sarcastic
response: ‘By law, they can slap people wearing cams ( camouflage) and shoot at
protesters ba?”
Security agents should, by now, begin
to interrogate these agents of destabilisation. There is no country in the
world where people are not going through some economic challenges and where the
cost of living is not a major issue. No country is immune from economic
turbulence at the moment. Civilised and democratic people wait for another
election to make leadership changes. They don’t trigger mayhem in their
countries by staging protests, the end of which nobody can predict.
Nigerian citizens must consider the
government's attitude and concern about the cost of living crisis when deciding
whether to join the protests by the Labour Party and IPOB supporters.
The Tinubu government has not been
found wanting in this regard. The minimum wage has been increased by more than
100 percent. Loans are being disbursed to students in tertiary schools. A
credit corporation has been launched to promote consumption credit.
Palliatives, including the latest distribution of 740 trucks of rice to the 36
states and Abuja, are being rolled out. Businesses, such as pharmaceuticals,
are being assisted. The Federal and state governments are investing heavily in
agriculture to produce more food.
The economy is improving, inflation
is slowing, the national debt has been reduced in dollar terms, and the FIRS
has increased revenue generation to record levels. Investors are coming back to
our country. Our stock market is the best in the world, with a 33 percent
return on investment.
President Tinubu has a four-year
mandate to run his agenda. Those calling for protest should wait till 2027 to
either re-elect him or elect their Messiah, Mr Peter Obi.''
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