The presidential candidate of the Labour Party in the 2023 General Elections, Peter Obi, has been accused of desperate opportunism and a plot to instigate chaos in the country for amplifying fake reports of a 114% increment in the salary of public officers.
Obi issued a statement on Thursday morning expressing concern over an alleged approval to increase the remuneration of public officers, including elected officials. He said it was an unnecessary move given the current economic situation of the country.
However, public service analysts, CSOs and other non-partisan organisations have criticised the statement as “baseless, hypocritical, self-serving and unstatesmanlike.”
They accused Obi of amplifying a fake report with the intent of inciting the public against the government. Safe Neighbourhoods Movement, a CSO, described Obi in its rejoinder as “a sore loser and an undemocratic actor incapable of moving past an election he lost and joining efforts to reform and rebuild the country.”
It said, “it is unfortunate that the presidential candidate of a country is peddling fake news. No approval has been given to increase salaries of public officers and none is imminent. The RMAFC with the constitutional mandate to facilitate such a review requires the approval of the National Assembly and State Assemblies in all the 36 states of the country, if it is to succeed. It is not something the president simply decrees.”
“It is either these facts are available to Mr. Obi and he chose to disregard them in service of his partisan agenda or he is unaware of them, further indicating himself as an ignorant political operative unprepared for the country’s leadership. Either way, his action has shown that Nigerians were right to reject him at the polls.”
Another CSO urged him to tame his “attention-seeking antics and desperate opportunism” as they are not in the interest of the nation’s wellbeing.
“Government opposition cannot be done through fake news and unpatriotic incitement. Is Obi willing to bring an end to Nigeria just because his religious war failed? Something must be done to checkmate him,” the group said.