1 month ago
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By Kazeem Ugbodaga
A former presidential spokesman, Reno Omokri has described the Obidient Movement as the biggest threat to Nigeria’s security.
He said their threat is to national security is more than that of Boko Haram and bandits.
In an X post, Omokri said “The biggest national security threat facing Nigeria today is not Boko Haram or bandits. Boko Haram is fighting to have an Islamic Caliphate, and their leadership has been decimated, while their ideas are being rejected and recruitment has dropped.
“Bandits are criminals, and their operations are purely for commercial gain.
“But the Obidient movement is different. They are fighting against democracy by refusing to accept the will of the Nigerian people as freely expressed during the #NigerianElections2023, and insisting that Peter Obi won an election in which he came third.
“They attack the integrity of the Independent National Electoral Commission, falsely claiming that the INEC was mandated by law to declare results electronically, thereby undermining the trust that the public has in that vital institution.
“Their fight against democracy is being escalated to the point that where anyone with an opposing view to theirs and who refuses to support their candidate and their movement has a brand, they use every means, fair or foul, to engage in reputation-savaging and to cancel that person and their brand as well as threaten their family members,” he said.
According to Omokri, they set up crowdfunding to report the social media profiles of their opponents and write bogus petitions against them to national and international organisations while coordinating on WhatsApp to use robotic devices to mass report their social profiles.
“Working with Arise TV and several influencers, they spread fake news and propaganda against opponents of their movement and the Nigerian state. They have a confirmation bias against Nigeria, especially the North and Southwest. As a result, they question positive news about Nigeria, even where it comes with evidence and promote bad news about Nigeria, even where it has no basis.
“Not stopping there, they constantly de-market Nigeria by misrepresenting the true state of government policy, such as the Samoa Agreement, which an Obidient, Sonnie Ekwowusi, lied about, falsely alleging that it is to promote the LGBTQ agenda.
“And in the wake of the Kenyan protest, their leader, Peter Obi, in a post on social media, asked why Nigerians do not learn from Kenya, an obvious attempt to trigger Kenyan-style protests.
“Their movement is actively seeking to instigate ethnic strife in Nigeria when their leader, Peter Obi, falsely asserts that people of Igbo origin are being targeted for demolition in Lagos as punishment for not voting for the APC when not one person has shown that their structure was illegally demolished,” he stated.
Omokri said this is even as Peter Obi lied that a court had given a verdict ordering the release of the leader of the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra, Nnamdi Kanu.
“However, contrary to Peter Obi’s IPOB-inspired lies, in a unanimous ruling on December 15, 2023, the Supreme Court ruled that Nnamdi Kanu had a case to answer for treason. After that, on May 20, 2024, the Federal High Court in Abuja ruled that Nnamdi Kanu should be denied bail.
“Finally, there is a sustained effort by Peter Obi and his movement to undermine President Tinubu personally, by making false claims about him, including that President Tinubu paid for 1411 people to go for #COP28 with government money. In fact, only 422 of the delegates of Nigeria were publicly funded. And not all of those publicly funded were financed by the Presidency.
“Unlike Boko Haram and bandits, Obidients are attacking the institutions that uphold our democracy, including free speech, the judiciary, and the Independent National Electoral Commission, and the corporate existence of Nigeria and her political stability are at risk if nothing is done, within the ambit of the law, to curb the excesses of this movement,” Omokri added.
