More reactions yesterday trailed the campaign
comments of the First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan,
on the opposition party, APC, and its presidential
candidate, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari.
The First Lady had in her recent campaign in Calabar
reportedly asked PDP supporters to stone APC
supporters chanting the “change” slogan of the party
and described Buhari as a man without brain at
another campaign in Kogi State.
In a statementin Lagos
yesterday, a member of
the APC Presidential Campaign
Council, Mr.Oladipo Johnson,said such comments
were in bad taste and capable of
creating violence and ethnic division among the people ahead of the
elections.
He expressed concern that instead of the First Lady to
use her position to campaign on the issues in the
elections, she had by her comments preached violence
and resorted to character assassination.
“It was simply in bad taste and unacceptable. The First
Lady’s hate campaign must be condemned to let the
world know how desperate the PDP and its affiliates
have become in their futile attempts to paint the
opposition black and hold on to power. But it’s all a
charade and obviously the Nigerian people can see
through such deceit and have already made up their
minds for an inevitable change come March 28″.
“First, she incited her supporters in Calabar to stone
APC supporters chanting the “change” slogan of the
party and went ahead to describe General Buhari as a
man without a brain in her campaign in Kogi State.
It’s that bad because of politics. Yet, the First Lady
frontally insulted Northerners as being against people
from the South. Why this kind of deliberate preaching
of ethnic chauvinism, playing up the ethnic card?
Now, what would our brothers and sisters in the North
think about us from the South West and indeed the
entire South? It is unthinkable but this is the reality of
our circumstance as the First Lady went ga ga, uttering
provocative pronouncements with reckless abandon.
But this ethnic bigotry must stop”, he stated. Johnson,
however, berated the PDP leadership and members for
keeping quiet on the comments which he regarded as
derogatory, adding that such stance was nothing but
complicity.
“If the PDP leadership and members cannot come out
and dissociate themselves from the First Lady’s
statements, then they are complicit. In any case, it’s
our responsibility to continue to tell Nigerians to
abstain from such bigotry and division by harping on
the biting issues of the day and consequently vote out
the peddlers of hate campaign and install the Buhari/
Oshibajo presidential ticket as a desirable path to a
new Nigeria. This is the task Nigerians have decided to
accomplish come March 28″.
Your Comments Are What Shows Us How You Feel About The Topic. Join us on Facebook http://facebook.com/nigeriannewsreporters and Twitter @ngnewsreporters