“First lady by her comments preached violence’

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
statement in 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″.