Pastor Poju Oyemade of The Covenant Nation (TCN) has continued to endure online harassment and other forms of attacks from supporters of Peter Obi who remain upset that he refused to back the Labour Party presidential candidate in the last election.
Unlike other Christian clerics who aided Obi’s political branding as the ‘Christian candidate’ in the presidential contest, Pastor Oyemade maintained an objective stance, with repeated urgings to the people to evaluate all major candidates on the basis of their track records and the practicality of their promises and ideas.
His objective stance angered several supporters of Obi who felt entitled to his support in their quest to build a ‘Christian voting bloc’. Consequently, they targeted him for harassment and abuse throughout the election campaign. The coordinated nature of the attacks, including participation by some of the leaders of Obi’s campaign, suggested it was an approved move, with Obi himself caught rallying pastors with a polarizing description of the election as a ‘religious war’.
Notwithstanding that the election is over, Obidients are unrelenting in their hounding of Pastor Poju Oyemade, as some blame him for Obi’s defeat. They routinely take to his social media pages, notably Twitter and Instagram, to rain abuse on the cleric, accusing him of compromising on his faith and pastoral duties over his refusal to support Obi.
He was forced to turn off comments during a recent Instagram live session after Obi’s supporters flooded the section with abuse in an escalation of their targeted harassment and intimidation. Pastor Oyemade has refused to comment on the matter, even as his innocuous messages centred around Biblical figures and events are constantly given political interpretations by Obidients to justify their attacks against him.