The Obi-Datti Media Office has disowned a picture of the 2023 presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, purportedly taken with the Finland-based Biafran separatist, Simon Ekpa standing by his side.
In a statement signed in Abuja, on Thursday, Head of Media Office, Diran Onifade, dismissed the photograph which has been making the rounds on social media, as photoshopped.
According to him, desperate trolls who are bent on casting his principal in bad light were behind the picture and several others in a bid to tarnish his hard earned reputation.
“We all grew up being educated that photos tell a thousand stories and do not tell lies as photos are usually self-evident.
“Yet that was long years ago and long before digital technology took the World like a storm.
“That standard narrative has changed remarkably with dubious minds always ready to deploy it creatively albeit negatively, to create what is non-existent.
“Obi-Datti Media office notes that the scenario is exactly what played out in the photoshopped picture of the Presidential Candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi supposedly standing with the Finland-based irritant Biafra agitator, Simon Ekpa all in a desperate move to drag Obi’s name into disrepute by linking him with the ugly story that Ekpa has become in Nigeria,” Onifade stated.
He further that, “For clarity, the picture was taken by Obi standing with an admirer on a Virgin Flight on Friday, July 21, 2023. In trying to authenticate their filthy and disgustingly dirty act, they inserted the picture of Aisha Yusuf behind them.
“The memory may be short to forget that Obi was the first to describe the sit-at-home thing as an act being engineered and bred by a criminal that the system has refused to squarely tackle.
“Now that the menace of this crime is becoming manifest even to attract the views of the nation’s parliament, it may be necessary to critically study the handling of this crime.”
Meanwhile, in a related development, Onifade accused those he described as troll agents commissioned by the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, of putting out a fake advert purporting Peter Obi as “providing 20GB Free Data and N5000 Airtime in celebration of his 62nd Birthday.”
The Media Office said, “This is a SCAM! Subscriber beware!
“It is mindboggling that these criminal ploys are passed off as playing politics. Instead of seeking the line of a final solution to the cankerworm that has embarrassingly held the region and the country down, some mischief makers who are obsessed with Peter OBI’S rising fame are concerned with linking him to Ekpa.
“Yet, another failed attempt to dent the political Eagle whose concern is how to create a new Nigeria and reduce the growing poverty in the land.
“Obi-Datti Media office thinks that the reasonable thing to do if this country is sincere in tackling its socio-political and economic challenges is to quietly study the views laboriously expressed by this phenomenal political leader of contemporary Nigeria instead of trolling him endlessly.”
