The media office of the Obi-Datti campaign for the 2023 presidential election has described as the handiwork of mischief makers, the purported ‘political merger’ between the Labour Party’s presidential candidate, Peter Obi, and his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) counterpart, Atiku Abubakar.
The office, in a statement it issued today, described the speculation as the work of propagandists, whom it accused of indulging in distorting facts in the pursuit of imaginary relevance.
The statement read, “We know the intention of the spin-doctors in selling an utterly false story that the highflying Labour Party candidate, Peter Obi, met with his PDP counterpart and reached a deal. Nothing can be further from the truth!
“While we understand the frustration of dealing in their hard-to-sell, ‘expired milk’ [apologies to BAT] in a competitive market, the FairPlay rule demands that you don’t associate the good with the bad product. We demand honour even among thieves!”
“Obi’s foreign trip, its motive, and where and who to meet are already in the public domain; his meeting in the UK with some Nigerian political leaders is visually seen by all. But mischievous propagandists prefer to concoct lies in a desperate effort to clean up their candidate.
“We understand why the focus is on the Obi-Datti candidacy; they are easily the front runners in this 2023 race and the tag team has irresistible messages that are resonating with the embattled Nigerian public who are anxious more than ever to reclaim and take back their country.
“The LP candidates are on a divine mission to rescue and rebuild this country and cannot be distracted by any fabrication intended to mislead. If Obi’s mission is to rescue Nigeria from the old order, he ought not be seen working for the changing order.
“The same people who said that Obi is a social media phantom wave without political structure to win an election are today struggling to ‘photoshop’ the same Obi with their candidate.”
The statement added that Obi’s respect for Atiku or any leader in this country had more to do with his sound upbringing, and the fact that his style of politics was devoid of hate and bitterness and should, therefore, not be misconstrued as “cavorting with the spent order represented by the competition.”
The “propagandists”, the office further stated, needed to know that the movement Obi and Datti-Ahmed were driving was not something in control of one man negotiating it away.