The President’s promise was given when yesterday’s confrontation between Mr. Peter Obi, the Labour Party’s 2023 presidential candidate, and Mr. Bayou Onanuga, the President’s Special Advisor on Information and Strategy, took a new turn.
President Bola Tinubu has begged resentful Nigerians to put off their planned nationwide protest against the high expense of living, citing lack of necessity. This is especially true for young people who are organizing the demonstration.
The President also gave the people organizing the protest his word that he has heard their complaints and is making a concerted effort to guarantee that all of their issues are taken seriously.
After meeting with Tinubu at the Presidential Villa in Abuja, Mohammed Idris, Minister of Information and National Orientation, relayed the President’s request to State House media.
The President’s promise was given when yesterday’s confrontation between Mr. Peter Obi, the Labour Party’s 2023 presidential candidate, and Mr. Bayou Onanuga, the President’s Special Advisor on Information and Strategy, took a new turn.
Obi’s lawyers, yesterday, wrote Onanuga, demanding N5 billion and an apology within 72 hours for accusing him and his supporters of high treason in allegedly being masterminds of the planned “EndBadGovernance protest.”
In like manner, former presidential aspirant and a chieftain of the LP, Professor Pat Utomi, challenged Onanuga to produce evidence of his involvement in the planned protest or face N500 billion litigation.
The minister said that at the meeting with the President, general issues on the country were discussed and that the President said he is working assiduously to ensure the country’s economy is placed in a good position.
His words: ‘’We discussed the issue of the country in general and Mr President has asked me to again inform Nigerians that he listens to them, especially the young people that are trying to protest.
“Mr President said he listens to them and takes what they say seriously and he is working assiduously to ensure that this country is good not just for today, but also for the future.
“The issue of the planned protest, Mr President does not see any need for that, he asked them to shelve that plan and he has asked them to await the government’s response to all their pleas, he has listened to them.’’
However, former Anambra State Governor, Mr. Peter Obi, has given Mr. Onanuga, 72 hours within which to pay N5billion as damages as well a public apology published in four national newspapers for defamation and libel or face legal action.
Obi demanded that Mr. Onanuga, retract his wild allegation linking him to the planned mass protest scheduled for August.
Recall that the Presidential spokesman had on July 20, 2024, claimed in his X handle @aonanuga1956 that: “ Peter Obi’s supporters are the people planning mayhem in Nigeria and that Obi should be held responsible for anarchy.”
Onanuga’s post was tagged, “Revealed: Peter Obi’s supporters are the people planning mayhem in Nigeria. Obi should be held responsible for anarchy.”
He claimed that individuals who hijacked the 2020 ENDSARS protests are behind the EndBadGovernance and Tinubu Must Go protest. He described the masterminds as anarchists and bad losers who cannot wait for for the 2027 elections but instead were seeking to destabilise Nigeria through a civilian coup, and asked that Obi be held responsible if the protest turned into anarchy.
Onanuga warned that the protesters’ call for revolution and ending an elected government amounted to high treason and called on security agencies to take action against those threatening Nigeria’s stability.
The post read in part: “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 agenda.
“Lagos still bears the scars of the malicious destruction by IPOB elements until today. Two years after #EndSARS, the IPOB and 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 post elicited immediate response from the Labour Party and Obi’s Media office. While LP denied involvement saying the party, its supporters and Obi were not planning any protest, Obi’s Media Office, said the Presidency’s allegation was a ploy to arrest Obi.
Going further, yesterday, Obi, writing through his counsel, Chief Alex Ejesieme, SAN of the Madiba Chambers, said that the allegation which was widely published in social and mainstream media and read by many within and outside the country, maligned his hard-earned reputation as a man, who indulges in violence when all his antecedents are vivid that he abhors violence even in the face of extreme provocation.
The legal counsel wrote: “It’s our client’s conviction that the publication was a calculated plot to demean, ridicule, humiliate and embarrass him by the estimation of every right-thinking member of the society.”
The letter further stated that the allegation may have achieved its insipid motive as well-wishers from all around the globe have inundated Obi to register their shock.
“His appellation as ‘Okwute’ (the Rock) notwithstanding, the demeaning and scandalous publication has also caused a serious emotional injury to our client, given his decades of stellar stewardship in private and public life.