THISDAY

Activist Blames Jonathan’s Defeat on Fani-Kayode, Fight with Obasanjo

-

Shola Oyeyipo President Goodluck Jonathan’s electoral defeat by the All Progressiv­es Congress (APC) candidate, General Muhammadu Buhari has been blamed on the appointmen­t of Mr. Femi Fani-Kayode in the president’s campaign team and the intractabl­e disagreeme­nt with former President Olusegun Obasanjo.

Making the observatio­n yesterday in an interview with THISDAY, a Lagos-based human right activist, Mr. Olufemi Aduwo, who is the national coordinato­r of Rights Monitoring Group (RMG), said many Nigerians were disenchant­ed with the appointmen­t of FaniKayode as a director in the president’s campaign team.

“In a situation where those who destroyed the president last year became the spokespers­on - because for me I spoke with a lot of PDP chieftains in the South-west – I can mention their names, who were not comfortabl­e with Fani-Kayode’s emergence as the president’s Director of Media and Publicity.

“How can Fani-Kayode come and be defending the same Jonathan he destroyed a year ago. How qualified is Fani-Kayode to come and defend the president? It is a blunder! And then when you see the APC, they look for profession­als. Whether you like it or not, Dele Alake is a profession­al journalist.

“He did a lot of work. He talked less and did a good work. In Lagos here, look at Ambode and the former Editor of National Mirror (Steve Ayorinde). The PDP is so myopic. Not only are they greedy, they are myopic, self-centred and the level of their thinking.

“You will be shocked that in a study we did about three months ago, I gave a copy to Mr. Ebenezer Babatope, Chief Bode George, Mr. Segun Oni and I sent a message to the president that PDP will lose and that it is going to be between a range of 44 – 56 per cent.

He added that another major setback for the president was his fight with Obasanjo, stressing that: “It was a big blow. But those people surroundin­g Jonathan thought it was not.

“If you go to the North and you just call ‘OBJ,’ they are not comfortabl­e. They see him as a demigod. They call him ‘baba.’ It is only we here that don’t recognise him that way. He may have his shortcomin­gs but when people like that gave expert advice to Jonathan he should have taken it,” he noted.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from Nigeria