The media offices of Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and All Progressives Congress (APC) National Leader Bola Tinubu issued separate statements, yesterday, warning the public to beware of plots by unscrupulous persons against their principals.
Osinbajo and Tinubu have both declared their intention to contest the presidency in next year’s general elections. The duo’s aspirations, however, have further stirred political waters, with some of their supporters hurling accusations and counteraccusations.
Titled, ‘Tinubu is the target of blasphemous campaign’, the aspirant’s media office said: “The orchestrated set-up of a poster campaign seeking to use a literary application of the Biblical story of Judas Iscariot’s betrayal of Jesus Christ to rope Asiwaju Tinubu into a storm of blasphemy is the most desperate antics of anti-Tinubu propagandists in recent times.”
It said: “Investigations have revealed that those who created the offensive poster were the same people who created the counter-campaign alleging blasphemy. Their design is used both to provoke anger against the person and aspiration of Asiwaju Tinubu.
“This campaign has failed. This is clearly irresponsible and insensitive political propaganda that seeks to exploit religious sentiments to manipulate public perception against Asiwaju Tinubu, who is ostensibly the most formidable presidential aspirant in this race.”
“The plot has been traced to a cell of smear campaigners, led by a U.S. based Nigerian, who was formerly a Students Union President at the University of Lagos. The same individual is currently a lecturer at the University of Ohio in the USA.
“The plan is to use fake audio of faceless individuals with fictitious names to cast the Vice President, who is a Christian, as a religious fanatic, who discriminated against the staff of other faith while he was Attorney General (AG) and Commissioner for Justice in Lagos State during the tenure of former Governor Bola Ahmed Tinubu.”
“As observed by someone who was in the same ministry at the time Osinbajo served as Attorney General, no such incident ever occurred and this is just a malicious and wicked attempt to sully the sterling qualities of Osinbajo because of his presidential aspirations.
“Indeed as Attorney General, Osinbajo’s Secretary, a Muslim, Alhaji Abdul Gafar Bakare, had testified before now that the then Lagos AG ‘did not only encourage me to further my education, even at my relatively old age, he personally sponsored my BSc Accounting Programme.’ He added that the Vice President also sponsored his foreign travel then.
“Even though a Christian pastor, Osinbajo has always demonstrated himself to be a tolerant Nigerian who believes in inter-faith harmony and freedom of worship, as enshrined in the 1999 Constitution as amended.
“During his career as a university teacher, he taught Muslims and Christians alike in a convivial atmosphere. He also had excellent working and private relationships with Muslim bosses over the decades, including Judge Bola Ajibola, former Governor Tinubu and President Muhammadu Buhari. Osinbajo remains a firm believer in Nigeria’s diversity and an ardent proponent of Nigerian unity.
PRESSING its argument further, Tinubu’s media office said: “It is widely known that Asiwaju Tinubu is married to not just a Christian but an ordained pastor, Senator Oluremi Tinubu, and has developed a very deep fraternal relationship with Christendom at all levels, a fact acknowledged by many bishops, pastors and parishioners over the years.
“A known Muslim, Asiwaju in words and actions has demonstrated religious tolerance and accommodation. He believes in the cardinal principle of the Nigerian Constitution that no one should suffer discrimination on the basis of creed or opinion.
“It is, therefore, impudent to contemplate that a statesman of Asiwaju Tinubu’s standing will condone Biblical allusions that could denigrate his person or status.
These basic facts were ignored by those desperate to set Muslims against Christians through deliberate disinformation of the general public.
“This is an irreducible minimum for us. We urge others to join us in this patriotic mission by shunning desperation and verbal violence in the campaign for the highest office in the land.”
