The Need for Onanuga to Tone Down Rhetoric

Rather than focus on the promoters of #EndBadGovernance protests, who have never hidden their identities, the Special Adviser to President Bola Tinubu on Communication and Strategy, Mr. Bayo Onanuga, last week made a failed attempt to divert the attention of Nigerians to the presidential candidate of the Labour Party in 2023 election, Mr. Peter Obi, with his wild, malicious, cruel and divisive allegations that Obi’s supporters and kinsmen were the ones behind the planned peaceful protests in the country.

Onanuga knew the promoters, who had published the locations of the protests’ coordinators across Nigeria and had also listed their demands.

But he mischievously ignored them because their identities contradicted his dubious claims that Obi’s supporters and his kinsmen were behind the protests.

 The presidential aide, who had established a reputation for his ethnic slur against Igbo, was aware that the Department of State Services (DSS) arrested two youths, Khalid Aminu, an engineer, and Aliyu Sanusi for allegedly mobilising Nigerians for the planned protests in Kaduna and Sokoto states, respectively.

 A popular TikToker, Junaidu Abdullahi aka Abusalma, was also arrested by the DSS and remanded in Kano prison for days for posting a viral video mobilising for the protests.

But Onanuga ignored the arrest of these youths because they did not fit into his false narratives of profiling those with unverified identities on social media, and associating people with doubtful identities with Obi and his supporters.

At every given opportunity, he sold the false narrative that a certain people he hated with passion hijacked #EndSARS protest.

Curiously, he has failed to tell the world how those arrested in Lagos State and other parts of the country for their alleged role in the destruction of public facilities during the protest were linked to Obi’s kinsmen.

Onanuga is aware and it is all over the social media that the reasons for the planned protests, according to the promoters, include: “Hunger, inflation, fuel pump price, lack of power supply, poverty, naira devaluation, bad roads, budget padding, rigging of elections with impunity, high cost of governance, appointments based on highest bidders, crude oil theft, excessive borrowings, non-functional refineries, corrupt judiciary,” among others.

He needs to know that getting President Bola Tinubu’s administration to address these issues is the best way to go and not chasing shadows and creating false narratives.

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