Segun Atanda/
Spokesman of the Muhammadu Buhari Campaign Organisation, Mr. Festus Keyamo (SAN), has described former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s latest outcry as an attempt to deflect the damage the immortalisation of June 12 had done to his image.
Obasanjo had on Friday raised the alarm that the Federal Government was plotting to slam false charges on him through the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to create an excuse for his indefinite detention.
But, Keyamo in a tweet says the main reasons for the former president’s outcry was to attract sympathy to himself and to reduce the significance of Buhari’s June 12 declaration.
He also described Obasanjo’s statement as “childish prank”.
Keyamo’s tweet reads: “OBJ’s outcry is for two reasons: 1. To attract unearned sympathy to himself in order to deflect the damage d immortalisation of June 12 has done to his image as d main antagonist of Abiola’s mandate & 2. to dampen d accolades going d way of PMB over d issue. It’s childish prank.
“It is moral depravity for OBJ to attempt to whip up sentiment in his latest scheme by ‘sympathising’ with the N/Assembly leadership, whereas he had consistently abused them in the past and during his time he used many devious means to remove several Senate Presidents from office.”
The Peoples Democratic Party, however, said it was alarmed by Obasanjo’s revelation.
The party, in a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Mr. Kola Ologbondiyan, on Friday, said Nigeria had become a police state under President Buhari.
Ologbondiyan said this revelation coming from a Nigerian of Obasanjo’s status was terrifying and had confirmed PDP’s fears that Nigeria had descended into a state where any one who opposed Buhari’s 2019 re-election bid was endangered.
The statement read in part: “The alarm by Chief Obasanjo has further shown that the PDP has not been crying wolf regarding the plots by the APC-led Federal Government to frame, arrest, detain and arraign political opponents of the APC, including regular Nigerians, for holding or canvassing opinions that are divergent to the interest of those in power.
“We invite Nigerians to note the travails faced by perceived opponents of Buhari’s Presidency, including Senate President Bukola Saraki, Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu, and senators, Shehu Sani and Dino Melaye, who had raised similar alarms in the past.
“The PDP urges Nigerians to note how the APC-controlled security forces, on Wednesday, arrested and detained opposition members in Ogun State, including a member of the House of Assembly, Adebiyi Adeleye, who were going about their legitimate activities, only to tag them as cult members.
“The PDP condemns APC’s resort to persecution, intimidation, harassment and framing of our members, as well as dissenting voices, just to suppress the opposition ahead of the 2019 election.”
In its reaction through the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the Federal Government said the Buhari-led administration will not be distracted by what he described as frivolous allegations from any quarter, especially those he said were cleverly choreographed to divert attention from a widely-acclaimed presidential proclamation and “to shore up support for a waning and egotistical cause.”
In a statement in Lagos on Friday, the minister said the administration was too busy trying to clear the mess of 16 years and build on its unprecedented achievements over the past three years to waste its energy and time on framing up anyone or dwelling on issues that are not grounded in fact.
He further noted: “This administration will never engage in a frame-up of innocent citizens. That is neither in the character of President Muhammadu Buhari nor in that of his administration.
“Only the guilty should be worried. To paraphrase an African proverb, a man who has no wife cannot lose an in law to the cold hands of death.
“The administration is also strongly committed to the tenets of democracy, including freedom of speech and the right to dissent.
“We understand that those who, in their time, were untethered to those principles would find it hard to believe.”
Obasanjo had also accused the government of putting his name on a watch list, alleging that information reaching him from the “top security echelon” indicated that his safety could no longer be guaranteed.
The former President noted that the current administration wanted to blackmail him into abandoning his divine mandate to protect the rights of Nigerians to better life.
He further revealed that he was reliably informed that, daily, plans were being perfected to curtail his liberty either through the seizure of his passport, or hounding him with the anti-graft agency.
He noted that the nation’s number three citizen was currently being harassed and the number four citizen was equally facing similar threat within the same government they serve.
Obasanjo made these allegations among others in a statement signed on his behalf by his media aide, Kehinde Akinyemi, in Abeokuta.
Part of the statement also read: “The alarm by Chief Obasanjo has further shown that the PDP has not been crying wolf regarding the plots by the APC-led Federal Government to frame, arrest, detain and arraign political opponents of the APC, including regular Nigerians, for holding or canvassing opinions that are divergent to the interest of those in power.”
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