Former Aviation Minister, Chief Femi Fani-Kayode (FFK), says the comment by Governor Godwin Obaseki of Edo about Sen. Bola Tinubu, presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), is unfair.
Fani-Kayode stated this in a statement he signed on Wednesday and made available to newsmen in Abuja.
FFK is the director of Public Engagements, Special (Media) Operations/Projects and New Media of the Tinubu/Shettima Presidential Campaign Organisation.
Obaseki was reported to have said on Monday that Nigeria would break up if the APC wins the 2023 presidential election.
The governor spoke during the swearing-in of members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) campaign council management committee in Edo.
Reacting, the ex-minister condemned Obaseki’s statement.
“The notion that Nigeria will break up if our candidate Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu and our party, the APC, wins the presidential election next year is as nonsensical and puerile as it is asinine.
“The corollary of this view is that Nigeria can only remain together if Atiku wins.
“Whilst Governor Godwin Obaseki of Edo state is free to support whom he wishes, it is most unfair for him to attribute some kind of divine or deific status to Atiku Abubakar or hold him out as a unifier or bridge builder,” he said.
According to him, Atiku is by far the most destructive force that has bedevilled the fourth Republic.
“Not only did he attempt to destroy President Olusegun Obasanjo and his administration which he served from 1999 till 2007 but he also destroyed the chances of his party, the PDP, and President Goodluck Jonathan from winning the presidential election in 2015 by his infamous deceit and betrayal.
“Today, in 2022, he has done the same to PDP all over again by dividing the party, violating its constitution with impunity, imposing himself as its presidential candidate, insisting on keeping a divisive, cantankerous and malevolent specimen of a man who calls himself the National Chairman in power and betraying the few righteous and courageous Southern and Northern Governors in his party by implementing what is clearly an ethnic, religious and regional agenda,” he said.
He said if Atiku ever becomes president, he will destroy Nigeria itself in precisely the same way that he has destroyed the PDP.
“He will suck out the very soul of our nation with all its goodness and virtues and leave us a shadow of our former selves.
“He is a destroyer and not a unifier: a destroyer that is surrounded by a group of shady businessmen and wild and hungry touts who spend their time throwing crazy parties behind closed doors in exotic locations like Dubai, Paris and Morocco and who have no idea or knowledge about how to address our nation’s problems or run a modern nation-state.
“Placing Nigeria in the hands of such a man and such people will surely be our end.
“God forbid it,” he added.
According to FFK, to those that say that Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu is a dictator, I say this: if Tinubu is a dictator then Atiku is a serial political scammer and incredulous schemer who cannot be trusted by anyone and who would sell his soul to the devil for power.
“We know who the dictators are and Asiwaju is not amongst them,” he said.