After previous attempts to deny and deflect, the candidate of the Labour Party in the last presidential election, Peter Obi, has finally admitted the authenticity of the leaked controversial phone call with the founder of Living Faith Church Worldwide Bishop David Oyedepo.
His admittance came in a recent television interview where he struggled to explain his detainment in the UK amongst other issues. According to Obi, he made the phone call to Oyedepo to merely solicit support in a last-ditch attempt to shore up his numbers and emerge victorious at the polls.
But that account has been challenged as a dishonest sanitization of a dangerous outreach in which the candidate branded himself a Christian soldier of sorts and encouraged the cleric to target Christians across the country with divisive messages, including the framing of the election as a ‘religious war’.
When questioned about his usage of the phrase ‘religious war’, Obi demurred with an unrelated general statement about his purported lack of bigotry, citing past investments in the Muslim community including through the construction of mosques.
Since the leak was made public, the former Anambra governor has embarked on a PR blitz that reached a climax during the Ramadan festival with an organized visit to a Mosque in Anambra state. However, the tactic failed as the news was received with scepticism. Many pointed out that it was a calculated stunt pulled to douse growing tension and apprehension over the former candidate’s exposed bigotry.
Obi refused to provide further details of the call but ruled out that it was an Artificial Intelligence fabrication, much to the chagrin of his supporters who insisted for weeks that the audio was fake.