Former Deputy National President of the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ), Abia Onyike has decried the verbal attacks hauled on former governor of Anambra State and 2023 presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Mr. Peter Obi by the Minister of Works, David Umahi.
In a statement he issued in Abakaliki on Thursday, Onyike who was a former commissioner of Information in Ebonyi State said that Umahi’s outburst against Obi was “ill-digested” and “must be condemned by all well-meaning Nigerians.”
The former commissioner said that “Umahi’s latest comments against Obi were misguided and illogical. They represented Umahi’s uncanny acts of unrelenting sycophantic behaviour.”
He called on Nigerians to ignore the “uncouth, incoherent and anti-intellectual” position of Umahi.
The full statement reads:
The recent statement credited to the Minister of Works, Engr David Umahi where he accused the Presidential Candidate of the Labour Party in the 2023 elections, Mr. Peter Obi of inciting Igbo people against President Bola Tinubu, is a shameless and ill-digested outburst which must be condemned by all well-meaning Nigerians.
It is very unfortunate that Umahi has continued in his hollow ritual of empty vituperations on national issues, which is inspired by his anarchic mental summersaults.
Umahi’s latest comments against Obi were misguided and illogical. They represented Umahi’s uncanny acts of unrelenting sycophantic behaviour.
Saying that Obi is inciting Ndigbo against President Tinubu just because he criticized the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Road Project recently embarked upon by the Federal Government has exposed Umahi as a congenital propagandist and a coward. Obi’s criticism of the Coastal Road Project was his well- considered opinion which had nothing to do with Tinubu-Igbo relations.
But Umahi decided to adorn the garb of a self-appointed spokesman of the Tinubu administration. Umahi is behaving like a pocket-size sycophant and should be reminded that Nigerians have no time for his statements which are largely uncouth, incoherent and anti-intellectual in content.
Umahi is a man full of many vices. His political career is turning into a menace, a national disgrace and a nemesis to the Igbo Nation. No matter how diabolical, crooked and anarchic Umahi becomes, it is important to put it in record that Obi has towered above Umahi and his paymasters in the Nigerian political firmament.
Obi has passed all of them. He has grown beyond Umahi and his fellow political jobbers who are more concerned with their selfish aggrandizement than the wellbeing and survival of the Nigerian people.