BY SEGUN ADEOSUN
The Federal Government reacted sharply, on Friday, to the alarm raised by former President Olusegun Obasanjo that the President Muhammadu Buhari Administration was targeting him.
The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, who picked the gauntlet, told Obasanjo point-blank that the administration could ill-afford to be distracted by “frivolous allegations from any quarter,” particularly those, he claimed, were “cleverly choreographed to divert attention” from euphoria that greeted Buhari’s award of the nation’s highest honour, GCFR, to the late Basorun M.K.O Abiola.
Mohammed made the declaration in a statement issued in Lagos on Friday saying that the threat alert raised by the former President was a ploy designed to draw sympathy for a “waning and egotistical cause.”
The Minister didn’t stop there. He stated further that the Buhari Administration was too preoccupied with the arduous task of draining the swamp created by past administrations, over the past 16 years, and expanding its achievements of the last three years than to be swayed by ‘frivolous allegations’.
Similarly, Mohammed said the government could not afford to dissipate energy on framing up anyone as Obasanjo claimed in his alarm.
”This administration will never engage in a frame-up of innocent citizens,” Mohammed declared. “That is neither in the character of President Muhammadu Buhari nor in that of his administration.”
Still, the Minister was not done.
He said: “Only the guilty should be worried. To paraphrase an African proverb, a man who has no wife cannot lose an in-law to the cold hands of death.
”The administration is also strongly committed to the tenets of democracy, including freedom of speech and the right to dissent.
“But we understand that those who, in their time, were untethered to those principles would find it hard to believe.”
On its part, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, expressed shock at Obasanjo’s allegation that Federal Government was plotting to arrest him on phantom charges aimed at keeping him out of circulation.
This was the kernel of a statement issued by the party’s publicity secretary, on Friday, Kola Ologbondiyan, saying the allegation of threat by Obasanjo has underscored the party’s belief that the Buhari Government was increasingly becoming intolerant of dissenting voices.
“The alarm by Chief Obasanjo has further shown that the PDP has not been crying wolf regarding the plots by the APC-led federal government to frame, arrest, detain and arraign political opponents of the APC, including regular Nigerians, for holding or canvassing opinions that are divergent to the interest of those in power,” Ologbondiyan said in the statement.
“We invite Nigerians to note the travails faced by perceived opponents of Buhari Presidency including Senate President Bukola Saraki, Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu, Senators Shehu Sani and Dino Melaye, who had raised similar alarms in the past.
“The PDP urges Nigerians to note how the APC-controlled security forces, on Wednesday, arrested and detained opposition members in Ogun state, including a member of the House of Assembly, Hon. Adebiyi Adeleye, who were going about their legitimate activities, only to tag them as cultists.
“No amount of coercion, intimidation and illegal arrests will alter the determination of Nigerians to vote out the APC in the 2019 general elections.”