Chuks Okocha in Abuja and David-Chyddy Eleke in Awka

The Obidient Movement has responded to comments by the Special Adviser to the President on Media, Bayo Onanuga, describing his statement as an attempt to muzzle free speech in Nigeria.

Presidential candidate of the Labour Party in 2023, Peter Obi, had at a colloquium organised to mark the 60th birthday of former deputy speaker of the House of Representatives, Emeka Ihedioha, said democracy was collapsing in Nigeria and canvassed the need to rebuild it.

But Onanuga said Obi’s comment amounted to abuse of free speech.

In a statement by the Director Strategic Communications and  Media of the Obidient Movement, Nana Kazaure, titled: ‘’The Tinubu Administration and Its Descent Into  Dictatorship, said, ‘’The tendency for the Tinubu Administration to bury its head in the sand and play the ostrich has become one of its defining characteristics.

‘’Its latest attack on H.E. Peter Obi, through a presidential spokesman, Mr. Bayo Onanuga, betrays a desperate attempt to muzzle free speech guaranteed Nigerians by the 1999 Constitution (as amended).

‘’Onanuga responding to Peter Obi’s remarks during a Colloquium marking the 60th birthday of Emeka Ihedioha, former Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, where H.E Peter Obi had decried the increasing despotic inclination of the Bola Tinubu-led APC Federal Government, confirmed this tyrannical cast of mind by issuing a veiled threat to H.E. Peter Obi.

‘’Labelling H.E. Peter Obi as a disgruntled politician, Mr. Onanuga warned him to ‘watch his mouth’.

‘’As a Movement, we take serious exception to the uncouth threat by this choleric presidential spokesman whose antecedents as an instigator of intolerance and division is well known, recorded and documented.

‘’Having taken note of Mr. Onanuga’s threat, we ask him the question: watch his mouth.. or what? What exactly are Onanuga’s plan for H.E. Peter Obi?

‘’Or put more directly, what sinister plans has the Tinubu administration for its critics whose ranks swell daily on account of the administration’s cluelessness, and inability to provide sound and qualitative governance for Nigerians?

“We submit that if the Tinubu administration had invested a quarter of the energy and resources, it expends in hounding and demonizing varying opinions through its intemperate spokespersons and numerous cyber Rottweilers, Nigeria would be a far more decent and conducive place to live in.

“Unfortunately, we are stuck with a government high on talk but miserably low on action or any iota of progress.’

‘’As millions of Nigerians struggle to come to terms with the hardship, insecurity and dislocation foisted on the nation by ten years of APC misrule, the least that is expected of minions like Mr. Onanuga is to hide their heads in deep reflection on their pathetic complicity in bringing a once thriving country to its knees.’’

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