Ex-Governor Peter Obi, a presidential candidate of the Labour Party in the February 25 presidential election, has condemned information minister Lai Mohammed for his “rascality.”
His censure of Mr Mohammed followed the minister’s media blitz across the United States and the United Kingdom, where he sorely recriminated Mr Obi and his running mate, Datti Baba-Ahmed, who are accusing INEC, the APC and its regime of rigging the presidential poll in favour of the now-President-elect Bola Tinubu.
“We have many places where children don’t even have desks or classrooms to go to school. Instead of using money to do it, he (Lai Mohammed) used the money to go to Washington to announce treason of somebody who is in Onitsha,” Mr Obi said in an interview aired Monday night on ARISE TV. “It is rascality of the highest order.
The former Anambra governor added, “These are the reasons we want a new Nigeria. From there, he went to London, announcing the same thing. How did we gain here?”
Mr Obi was detained at Heathrow Airport, and his supporters and party had fingered the APC in his ordeal and humiliation.
Last month, in a thread of tweets, Mr Obi claimed that efforts from “high quarters” to portray him negatively were malicious and fictitious.
“In the past few days, I have observed various campaigns of calumny directed at my person, with the latest being allegations attributed to the Information Minister, Lai Mohammed, from Washington DC,” stated the ex-governor.
Mr Mohammed had chided the Labour Party presidential flag bearer for failing to rein Mr Baba-Ahmed regarding his utterances.
“What will be my offence? Is it by chiding the vice-presidential candidate of the Labour Party who said on live television that if President-elect Bola Tinubu is sworn in on May 29, that would be the end of democracy in Nigeria? the minister had said. “Is it for chiding him for saying that swearing in Tinubu on May 29 is like swearing in the military?”
He stressed that Mr Datti Baba-Ahmed had not denied his “treasonable” statement, and Mr Obi failed to publicly condemn Mr Baba-Ahmed’s objectionable utterance.
“The position of the law is clear that anybody who is aggrieved over election results should go to court. It is not to start threatening Nigerians and heating up the polity simply because you lost an election,” the minister had insisted.
