“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.

Patience Jonathan

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″.