PDP links Buhari to 1966 ‘Igbo massacre’

The exchange of brickbats between the Peoples
Democratic Party (PDP) and the All
Progressives Congress (APC) ahead of the
2015 elections has taken yet another turn, with
the PDP campaign organisation asking
Muhammadu Buhari to explain his role in the
events leading to the 1966 countercoup.
Addressing the media on Wednesday, Femi
Fani-Kayode, the spokesman of the PDP
campaign organisation, asked Buhari, the APC
presidential candidate, to answer questions on
the “massacre of Igbo” in Kano in 1966 and in
Asaba during the civil war.
He also said Buhari has been asked by foreign
countries to legalise gay marriage in Nigeria in
exchange for their backing in the presidential
election.
Fani-Kayode told the media: “[Buhari] needs to
answer questions about his role in the July 29,
1966 coup and the mass murder of about 300
Igbo army officers, including a serving Head of
State, that took place that night.
“Secondly, there are questions to be answered
about his role during the pogrom and massacre
in northern Nigeria in 1966 in which no less
than 100,000 innocent Igbo civilians, including
women and children, were slaughtered in cold
blood by mobs that were covertly armed and
supported by a small handful of junior army
officers.
“Thirdly Buhari’s role during the Asaba
massacre, in which hundreds of Igbo civilians
were murdered for no just cause, still needs to
be clarified. It is left to Buhari to clarify these
matters and tell us his role in all these events
but if these grave allegations are true, they
make him a prime candidate for the ICC
(International Criminal Court).
“Another episode in which Buhari has questions
to answer is his role in the mass murder of
hundreds of people in the northern part of this
country, including a number of young youth
corpers who were in their prime, by Buhari’s
supporters in 2011. This happened after he lost
the presidential elections and after he
encouraged them to go on the streets to commit
violence. That deviant behaviour alone makes
him a veritable candidate for the ICC.
“We are, indeed, grateful that a Dutch law firm
has, indeed, filed papers to the ICC asking for
General Buhari to be forcefully brought to the
court to answer questions about those killings
in northern Nigeria by his supporters in 2011.
The court action is appropriate and vital in light
of the remarks credited to General Buhari about
a year ago in which, inter alia, he said that if he
were to lose the 2015 Presidential election, the
”baboon and the dog would both be soaked in
blood”.
“What this means is that he intends to soak the
entire nation in blood in the event that he loses
the election on March 28. He has refused to
withdraw that statement and as a precursor to
the violence he will again unleash on Nigeria
after the Presidential election, his supporters
have been stoning the convoy of President
Jonathan in some parts of the north each time
he goes there to campaign.”
FULL TEXT OF FANI-KAYODE’S
PRESS CONFERENCE
Gentlemen of the media, Let me start by
expressing the gratitude of our Campaign
Organisation to all of you for the support you
have been showing us since we started this
journey.
We invited you here today to intimate the
Nigerian people, through your esteemed media
organisations, about a despicable and wicked
agenda that is being orchestrated by the
opposition to scandalise, undermine and bring
into disrepute our candidate, President
Goodluck Jonathan (GCFR), his wife, the First
Lady of Nigeria, Dame Patience Jonathan, our
Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani
Allison Maduekwe and other key government
functionaries and members of his
administration.
The special operations and intelligence wing of
my Directorate has been reliably informed that
the opposition is planning to air a documentary
about the private lives of President Jonathan,
the First Lady and the Minister of Petroleum
Resources. The documentary is riddled with
falsehood and it is vulgar, smutty, cheap,
shameful and salacious.  This initiative is being
spearheaded by the entire leadership of the All
Progressives Congress (APC) and is being
funded and organised by two serving governors
and one former governor who controls his state
through his hand-picked stooge.
Our response to this initiative is one of utter
repugnance. That the opposition has
degenerated to such a point that in response to
legitimate questions that were raised about the
record in public office of their Presidential
candidate, General Muhammadu Buhari and
their de facto leader, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, in
two major and widely viewed documentaries,
the only recourse they have, rather than
answering the questions put in those
documentaries, is to try to humiliate, shame
and disgrace our presidential candidate by
making the most baseless and scandalous
accusations about his private life. The truth is
that this shameful course of action will not
work and we shall not be distracted. Neither
will we lose any sleep over it.
We are, however, by this press conference,
sending a clear signal to the three APC leaders
that are funding and spearheading this initiative
that it will not in any way serve the interest of
their party or the interest of their Presidential
candidate if they insist on treading that path or
toeing that deplorable line. In the event of them
insisting on treading this dangerous and
dishonorable course, we reserve the right to
respond fully and use all legitimate means to
expose the inherent evil that these three
individuals habitually and continuously
manifest in both their private lives and whilst in
public office.
The truth is that they can say what they like
about President Goodluck Jonathan, his family
members and those close to him but one thing
they cannot say is that, unlike one of the three
individuals that is behind this disgraceful
initiative, President Jonathan does not show an
unhealthy interest in the affairs of little boys
and he does not indulge in gross and perverse
intimate acts with them in his spare time in an
obscene, indecent, shameful and completely
unacceptable manner.
They can say whatever they like about our
candidate but, unlike one of the three
individuals that are behind this reprehensible
initiative, it is not President Goodluck Jonathan
that ended up eloping with and eventually
marrying the house girl of his former leader.
They can say whatever they like about
President Jonathan but it is not our President
who drove his own father into political oblivion,
broke the poor man’s heart and sent him to an
early grave in pain, tears, defeat and shame.
Presidential Jonathan did not do any of these
things. It is those that have insisted on
engaging in this shameful and repugnant
initiative that have done these things. They
know who they are and, for now, we need not
mention their names. At the appropriate time,
we shall mention names and expose every
aspect of the sordid life styles of these
individuals and at that time the Nigerian people
will judge for themselves.
The second issue we want to touch on today is
the shameful proposition that was made to
General Muhammadu Buhari by the
representatives of a number of western
governments when he was in the United
Kingdom for a prolonged stay. He had appealed
to them for support and to get their
endorsement. He had talks with the
representatives of at least four western
countries. The leaders of those countries made
an offer to General Muhammadu Buhari and we
are reliably informed that he has put the offer
under consideration.
The proposition and offer was that if he was
prepared to support legislation in Nigeria to
allow same sex marriage and if he was
prepared to repeal the anti-gay laws in Nigeria
they will, in return, endorse, support and fund
him, initially covertly and eventually publicly, at
the right time.
Instead of outrightly rejecting these offers and
spurning this proposition, to our utter shock
and consternation, General Buhari apparently
refused to rule it out and has put the matter
under consideration. Instead of him to say NO
he assured them that he would consider these
two things.  We believe that this is a matter that
ought to be brought to the attention of the
Nigerian people as a matter of urgency.  The
APC are so desperate to ensuring that General
Buhari becomes the President of this country
that they are actually prepared to consider the
scrapping of all anti-gay or anti-homosexual
legislations and at the same time, endorsing
and supporting fresh legislation that would
allow same sex marriage in our country. They
are considering this despite the fact that the
overwhelming majority of the Nigerian people
find same sex marriage and, indeed,
homosexuality repugnant and unacceptable.
We are using this occasion to challenge
General Buhari to come clean and to tell the
Nigerian people whether this is true and
whether, in the unlikely event of his being
elected President, he is seriously considering
scrapping the anti-homosexual laws in our
country and pushing through new legislation
which would allow same sex marriage.
The third issue is as follows. We read, with
amusement, the threat by the Buhari’s
Campaign Organisation through their
spokesperson, Mr Garba Shehu, that it is their
intention to drag the First Lady, Dame Patience
Jonathan, before the International Criminal
Court of Justice (ICC), for allegedly indulging in
what they described as ”hate speech” at a
recent rally in Rivers State.
It is pertinent to note that, first of all, if they
were a little better educated and had a better
understanding of international law and how the
ICC works, they would appreciate the fact that
no individual is ever taken to the ICC based on
what he or she has said unless and until people
act on those words and massacre others. It is
only if that speech is followed by violence and
mayhem or if it incites people to commit
violence, which results in death, mass murder
and crimes against humanity, that the person
who indulged in such hate speech becomes an
eligible candidate for the ICC.
Dame Patience Jonathan is a woman of peace.
She did not threaten anyone with violence; she
did not incite anyone to commit violence or to
kill others and her words have not resulted in
death, mass murder or any crimes against
humanity. We therefore completely reject the
baseless charge and assertion that she has
called for the killing or slaughter of anyone at
any point in time.
Their threat to take the First Lady to the ICC is
not only absurd but it is also nothing but the
empty and boastful ranting of a perfidious,
desperate, decaying and dying political party
and such threat will amount to nothing.  The
truth is that if anybody is a candidate for the
ICC, it is certainly not Dame Patience Jonathan,
but rather General Muhammadu Buhari himself.
We say this because, firstly, he needs to
answer questions about his role in the July 29,
1966 coup and the mass murder of about 300
Igbo army officers, including a serving Head of
State, that took place that night. Secondly,
there are questions to be answered about his
role during the pogrom and massacre in
northern Nigeria in 1966 in which no less than
100,000 innocent Igbo civilians, including
women and children, were slaughtered in cold
blood by mobs that were covertly armed and
supported by a small handful of junior army
officers. Thirdl,y Buhari’s role during the Asaba
massacre, in which hundreds of Igbo civilians
were murdered for no just cause, still needs to
be clarified. It is left to Buhari to clarify these
matters and tell us his role in all these events
but if these grave allegations are true, they
make him a prime candidate for the ICC.
Another episode in which Buhari has questions
to answer is his role in the mass murder of
hundreds of people in the northern part of this
country, including a number of young youth
corpers who were in their prime, by Buhari’s
supporters in 2011. This happened after he lost
the presidential elections and after he
encouraged them to go on the streets to commit
violence. That deviant behaviour alone makes
him a veritable candidate for the ICC.
We are, indeed, grateful that a Dutch law firm
has, indeed, filed papers to the ICC asking for
General Buhari to be forcefully brought to the
court to answer questions about those killings
in northern Nigeria by his supporters in 2011.
The court action is appropriate and vital in light
of the remarks credited to General Buhari about
a year ago in which, inter alia, he said that if he
were to lose the 2015 Presidential election, the
”baboon and the dog would both be soaked in
blood”. What this means is that he intends to
soak the entire nation in blood in the event that
he loses the election on March 28. He has
refused to withdraw that statement and as a
precursor to the violence he will again unleash
on Nigeria after the Presidential election, his
supporters have been stoning the convoy of
President Jonathan in some parts of the north
each time he goes there to campaign.
It is very clear that General Buhari is a violent
man who has the disposition to incite people to
commit mass murder and acts of violence. We
wish to take this opportunity to make it
abundantly clear that if anybody is killed after
the 2015 presidential election after Buhari has
been defeated, we will hold him accountable
and fully responsible and we will ensure that he
faces the full wrath of the law.  Justice will be
brought to him swiftly and expeditiously.  We
advise General Buhari and his Campaign
Organisation to stop threatening the First Lady
with the ICC and instead spend their times
looking inwards and delivering themselves from
their obvious blood-lust and irrational and
bestial desire to inflict violence against those
who do not agree with them and who they
perceive as their enemies.
We hereby crave your indulgence to play a clip
of the brutal and blood chilling remarks made
by General Buhari which ultimately triggered
the orgies of violence recorded in some
northern parts of the country in 2011.
On a final note, we would like to refer you to a
set of pictures published on the front page of
the Leadership Newspaper edition of last
Tuesday.  As you can see, President Jonathan
is the lead figure in both pictures, which were
mischievously placed on top of one another.
In the first Picture, President Jonathan is
surrounded by some prominent Yoruba
traditional rulers led by His Imperial Majesty,
the Ooni of Ife, Oba Okunade Sijuade Olubuse
II.  You can see that the staffs of office of the
numerous traditional rulers were pointed
towards the President as he sat down and
whilst they prayed for him.
It has been brought to our attention that the
spokesperson of the APC actually sponsored
that advertorial and the contents of it reflect the
sheer depravity of that individual’s deep, dark,
disrespectful and sinister mind.  Under the
picture, they wrote; ”You cannot serve God and
mammon”. Right below the caption is another
picture in which President Jonathan was
praying both in Israel and at the Redeemed
Camp in Nigeria.  The intent and implication of
the pictures and the words below each of them
are clear.  The motive for displaying the
pictures in this manner and those words is to
bring not only President Jonathan but also our
revered Traditional Rulers in the south west
into disrepute and opprobrium.
Indeed, it beats our imagination how anybody
in his right senses could equate a legitimate
prayer for our President in the court of the Ooni
of Ife by a large number of Yoruba traditional
rulers, with the worship of mammon! It is
insulting, disrespectful and totally
unacceptable. We seize this opportunity to
issue a stern warning to Lai Mohammed and
his party to stop insulting the Traditional
Rulers of the south-western part of our
country. It was not too long ago that the de
facto leader of the APC, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu,
described the southwest Traditional Rulers in
the most uncharitable terms when he said only
three of them could be taken seriously.
We completely reject these insults on our Royal
Fathers and we hereby call on the APC leaders
to bury their heads in shame and apologise to
our Traditional Rulers.  We also demand an
apology from Lai Muhammed for encouraging
the posting of these pictures in this disgraceful
manner, organising the whole thing and
sponsoring the advert.  If they refuse to
apologise or refuse to withdraw the advert, then
we take it that the APC as a party has become
the enemy of every single Traditional Ruler in
Yorubaland and the consequence of that will be
far reaching and devastating for the fortunes of
their party in the coming elections.
We thank you for listening.