23rd March, 2023
Festus Keyamo, Minister of State for Labour and Employment has called on the Department of State Services (DSS) to immediately arrest the duo of Peter Obi and Datti Baba-Ahmed of Labour Party for making incendiary comments capable of causing insurrection against Nigerian government and the President-elect, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu.
Keyamo, in a petition he personally wrote to the Director General, DSS on Thursday, said he wrote the petition with the full realisation that in a post-election period such as this, there was a need to sooth frayed nerves, lower the temperature and begin the healing process, which he said Tinubu had issued a statement to this effect a few days ago.
“However, it appears the President and Vice-Presidential Candidates of the Labour Party, Mr. Peter Obi and Datti Baba-Ahmed are not prepared to toe this conciliatory path for the sake of peace and national cohesion, whilst exercising their rights to pursue duly laid down constitutional means of addressing their grievances.
“In this regard, since the declaration of the Presidential election results, they have been hopping from one media house to the other making incendiary comments and claims about the declaration of the President-elect by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
“These comments and claims are made, not just within the boundaries of exercising their rights to freedom of speech and the freedom to air their grievances publicly, but they have since crossed the line to call for the outright truncation of democracy by insisting on the adoption of other processes outside the contemplation of our Constitution. In some cases, their privies have even called for the establishment of an Interim Government,” he stated.
Keyamo said the latest of such were the comments made by Datti Baba-Ahmed on behalf of himself and Mr. Peter Obi on Channels TV on Wednesday, March 22, 2023, wherein he threatened that if the President-Elect was sworn in on May 29th, 2023, it would “signal the end of democracy”.
He argued that posing as an accuser, a judge and a jury all by himself, Baba-Ahmed unilaterally declared the duly elected President-elect as “unconstitutional” and, in a subliminal manner, threatened mayhem if the President-Elect was sworn in on May 29th, 2023.
Keyamo alleged that he had it on good authority that Obi and Baba-Ahmed had camped some youths in a popular hotel in Abuja with the sole aim of instructing them to push out inciting messages everyday on social media in order to cause panic and fear within the federation and to incite people to riot and social unrest.
According to him, it is noteworthy that Obi and Baba-Ahmed had submitted Elections Petitions to the courts for adjudication, but that their conducts and utterances amounted to subversion of the processes they had instituted in court and a subversion of the nation’s Constitution and the laid-down processes for addressing disputes and grievances.
“These conducts and utterances are a build-up to something more sinister and it is important you rein them in NOW!
“In the circumstance, I submit this petition in my personal capacity as a patriotic Nigerian to invite/arrest, interrogate and after investigation, if necessary, charge both individuals to court for their conducts which amount to incitement and treasonable felony,” he said.