The Director General of the Peter Obi campaign council, Akin
Osuntokun, has asked the Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El Rufai, to devote
his time to seeking God’s forgiveness for the calamity he “wrecked on a section
of Kaduna state.”
This is as Mr Osuntokun accused the former minister of the
Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, of being notorious and having the disposition
to start a war.
Mr Osuntokun, in the statement was responding to Mr El-Rufai’s
comment on the Labour Party presidential candidate, Mr Obi.
During an interview with Television Continental (TVC), Mr
El-Rufai described Mr Obi as a Nollywood actor who stands no chance of winning
the presidential election.
Mr El-Rufai also claimed that Mr Obi is a tribal and
religious bigot.
In his response, Mr Osuntokun argued that if Mr El-Rufai
agreed that the Labour Party would sweep the South-south and the South-east,
and have the votes in the Christian part of the North, then Mr Obi should be
addressed as a political heavyweight because not even the first republic
politicians like the late Ahmadu Bello, Obafemi Awolowo and Nnamdi Azikiwe
enjoyed such political dominance.
“It is ironical that a man who tags the Labour Party (Obi)
with the tar brush of “ethnicity and religious bigotry” is the leading light if
not the evil genius behind the weaponisation of religious cleavage indicated in
the Muslim/Muslim presidential ticket of his political party. This has been
template he brought Kaduna State politics,” he said.
Mr Osuntokun said Mr El-Rufai has marginalised Southern
Kaduna, a zone with a large population of Christians.
“Another feather to his cap of unrestrained notoriety and
bellicosity is not limited to Nigeria. Knowing fully well that a free, fair and
credible election (and as attested by foreign observer teams), was not in the
interest of his party in the 2019 general elections, he issued a threat to the
latter on the eve of the elections:
‘Those that are calling for anyone to come and intervene in
Nigeria, we are waiting for the person that would come and intervene, they
would go back in body bags’.
“El-Rufai enjoys the dubious distinction of duplicating the
carnage and festival of bloodletting on Kaduna State what his principal has
visited on the larger Nigeria community in the past seven years. This is a
governor who should hourly beseech the mercy and forgiveness of God for the
calamity he wreaked on a segment of Kaduna State populace. That such a
mouthpiece of the disastrous stewardship of the APC should presume to
pontificate and cast aspersions on someone with a vastly superior record of
public service is the height of insolence and impunity. It is in recent memory
that El Rufai was one of the star proxies of their presidential candidate who
couldn’t speak for himself at the Chatham house-to the humiliation and disgrace
of Nigeria before a bewildered international community,” he said.
Mr Osuntokun said Nigerians would trust “credible” polls
conducted that placed Mr Obi ahead of other presidential candidates than take
Mr El Rufai’s words.
Asking who should be tagged a Nollywood candidate, Mr
Osuntokun took a jab at the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential
candidate, Bola Tinubu.
“Who best personifies the Nollywood world of make belief?
Where else but in movies would anyone speak in tongues of the blu blaba boo
variety? Or remind us that contrary to street side common knowledge, Atiku
Abubakar was indeed ‘Senate president’, not vice president?
“The good news of Obi’s emergence is that win or “lose”, he
has fostered a seismic change in the political configuration and culture of
Nigeria. It is the dawn in which El-Rufai and the retrogressive forces he
represents are going to be on permanent disorderly retreat. God does not start
a project he cannot finish,” he said.
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