The National Secretary of the All Progressives Congress, Prince Basiru Ajibola has described the Labour Party Presidential candidate in the 2023 presidential election, Mr. Peter Obi as one with a shallow mentality and perspectives following his World Press Conference asking President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to reintroduce himself to Nigeria.
Prince Ajibola who was a guest on Channels TV political programme Politice Today, weighed on the press conference of both Mr. Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar where they questioned the identity and academic credentials of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
In the program monitored by Podium Reporters , Prince Basiru Ajibola said, “it is unfortunate that Mr. Peter Obi allowed the seeming trauma that has affected Mr. Atiku Abubakar to also affect him. We will say that perhaps there would be the need for our school of psychiatry to begin to look for what could be traumatizing some people after electoral loss.”
“For somebody to spill the kind of rubbish Mr. Peter Obi spewed today, telling someone who has been a Senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Chairman Senate Committee on Appropriation, someone who has rose in his professional career to become the treasurer of Mobil, someone who has ruled the most prosperous state in Nigeria (Lagos State), someone who had contested presidential elections and won close to 8.9 million votes to be talking about his identity, I think it is preposterous. It shows the kind of mentality and kind of shallowsness of the perspective and understanding of Mr. Peter Obi and his co-traveler, Atiku Abubakar or Siddiq Abubakar or whatever we may call him.
“For someone to rise to that level in the corporate world in Mobil and then you are talking about the identity being shrouded in mystery, If there is any mystery at all, I think the mystery is in the brain and possibly in the traumatizing effect of electoral loss on Mr. Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar.”
The APC National Secretary described the questions being asked by Mr. Peter Obi as stupid questions stating that Peter Obi is actually the one trying to bring disrepute to the country. He went further to reveal that a team of investigators in the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) investigated the alleged certificate forgery debacle and came out with findings consistent with what was in the transcript of the deposition by the CSU Registrar.
According to Prince Basiru Ajibola, the BBC team said that the Registrar clearly admitted that they gave admission to Mr. Bola Tinubu with emphasis on the “Mr”, which clearly put paid to Atiku’s and Obi’s question of whether the President attended CSU and the strange question of his gender. The BBC team also confirmed that the Registrar disclosed that in CSU they have used different templates for their diplomas at different times and that replacement certificates are issued using the template in use at the time of the request and signed by the official signatories currently on seat.
“The BBC team equally saw that Registrar Caleb Westberg affirmed that in the CSU and the US generally, they do not place much premium on diploma as they see them as ceremonial documents, rather they place premium on transcripts. The CSU released the transcript of Mr. Bola Tinubu and went further to say in the testimony under deposition that the person that owns the transcript is the same person who is today the President of Nigeria. I wonder what else does any reasonable individual who is not affected by a malady of electoral loss would need to see before they come to the conclusion arrived by the BBC”, Prince Basiru Ajibola queried.
“If at all, there is a doubt or controversy, it is self-contrived, ill-motivated, ill-advised and it’s a journey to continue to lie to their supporters. The election has been won and lost and this is the first time in Nigeria that people are not talking about election being manipulated, they are not talking about results being written without a ballot.
“First they talked about 25% threshold in FCT, which they later dropped. The talked about so-called civil forfeiture of funds in the United States of America by President Bola Tinubu and they have moved on from there too. Now, they are talking about the fact that someone graduated from a school and still forged his certificate!”
The National Secretary of the APC also noted that Mr. Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar are descending in the arena and wondered if it is not about time to invite the Attorney General to check whether their acts does not amount to treason. Prince Basiru Ajibola also lambasted the duo of Mr. Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar as unfit to even begin raising issues of morality, integrity or constitutional democracy.
He said that Mr. Peter Obi for one did not conduct local government elections as Anambra State governor for almost 8 years while Atiku Abubakar has not yet cleared his name around the many web of corruption acts involving PTDF and the privatization policies of the Obasanjo government that even his former boss, President Olusegun Obasanjo mentioned in his book, ‘My Watch’ neither has Atiku taken Obasanjo to court for defamation of character if he felt the damaging accusations were lies.
Prince Basiru Ajibola described Atiku Abubakar and Mr. Peter Obi as bad losers and advised them to be man enough and democratic enough to realize that elections are won and lost at the ballot and not on the basis of raising baseless allegations that patently absurd too.
The APC National Secretary also set the records straight on the misconception surrounding the suit filed by the late Chief Gani Fahwenmi challenging the certificate of the President who was then Governor of Lagos State in 1999. Prince Ajibola said that the suit was based on an error by Senator Tokunbo Afikuyomi who filled the electoral forms of Bola Tinubu then and mistakenly entered University of Chicago instead of Chicago State University which are two different universities.
Chief Gani according to him made enquiries to University of Chicago and then said they have no record of a Bola A. Tinubu as their student. This formed the basis of Chief Gani Fahwemi’s suit, which eventually failed at the Supreme Court and Bola Ahmed Tinubu went on to contest for re-election in 2003, which he won.
Speaking further, the APC scribe stated that the present misadventure of Atiku Abubakar to CSU was baseless and has no bearing to the petition Atiku filed in court, which did not include any issue about the President’s academic qualification, noting that what Atiku alleged in paragraph 146 of his petition was simply that ‘as at the time of the election, President Bola Tinubu was not qualified to contest for the election’, without stating further details as to why President Tinubu was not qualified.
He revealed that Atiku Abubakar sought to raise the issue of citizenship after the replies by the respondents have been filed when his counsels filed their response to the respondents replies. Even at that they did not allege that the certificate of the President was forged neither did they raise doubts about his identity or age.
Prince Basiru Ajibola concluded that Atiku and Obi are simply raising issues of certificate for unsuspecting members of the public and their supporters as an afterthought as there are no legal hanger on which all these irrelevant arguments can be based.