RIPPLES NIGERIA
The Lamidi Apapa faction of the Labour Party (LP) has knocked the party’s presidential candidate in the February 25, 2023, Peter Obi, over his recent criticisms of President Bola Tinubu’s administration.
This is coming after a series of statements posted on the Obi’s X handle that were critical of Tinubu’s administration or faulting its actions.
Reacting in a statement on Tuesday, the factional Publicity Secretary of the Labour Party, Abayomi Arabambi, said Obi was still “basking on the euphoria of 2023 Presidential Election defeat shock”.
According to Arabambi, Obi had recently come up with his style of “deceptive politics of chunning out fictitious and unfounded figures and indices on national issues where he lied that the federal government-sponsored Delegation to Dubai was 1,411 as against 422.”
Obi’s “destructive criticism” of the Nigerian State on the International Day for the Abolition of Slavery “came from one who is myopic” about the topical issues in the world at large, and Nigeria in particular, Arabambi said.
He also insisted that “Peter Obi’s outburst of confusion regarding the Walk Free Organisation Global Slavery Index Reports of 2023 has further exposed his shallow intellectual capacity and campaign of calumny against the Nigerian State and further exposed his quest to wallow in character assassination of Mr. President to gain undeserved sympathy.”
He however enjoined Nigerians to go through research to get first-hand information themselves, rather than relying on “falsehood”.
He said: “The lies in the form of figures, data, indices and parameters quoted by Peter Obi have been found to be the handiwork of a frustrated self-acclaimed opposition leader, bereft of spirit of patriotism and goodwill to the nation.
“From the 2023 Global Slavery Index Reports by the Walk Free Organisation, the country rated with the highest rate of people experiencing modern slavery in 2023 in the world was North Korea. So, Peter Obi ought to have embarked on in-depth research before coming to the public sphere to dish out fake indices and data.
“In Africa, the countries with the highest prevalence of modern slavery are Eritrea, Mauritania and South Sudan. Nigeria is adjudged to be a country enjoying minimal cases of modern slavery.
“Coming to the world in general, the latest Global Slavery Index Reports produced by human rights groups, Walk Free Organisation, revealed the ten countries with the highest prevalence of modern slavery.
“In the descending order of magnitude were North Korea, Eritrea, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Turkiye, Tajikistan, UAE, Russia, Afghanistan, and Kuwait,” the statement read in part.
“The LP National Chairman, Alh Bashiru Lamidi Apapa therefore distances the party from the unguided utterances of Peter Obi, who is well known for cooking up figures, data and indices to deceive the gullible Nigerians and his daft infamous ethnic irredeemable…
