Gbadamosi denies inciting public against government

Lagos State candidate of the Action Democratic Party (ADP) in the 2019 gubernatorial election, Babatunde Gbadamosi, has described his recent comments on some national issues as personal opinion.

Gbadamosi had commented on the Federal Government’s release of the convener of ‘RevolutionNow’, Mr. Omoyele Sowore, and former National Security Adviser (NSA), Col. Sambo Dasuki (rtd.) as well as the attack at the residence of former President Goodluck Jonathan on Tuesday.

Addressing the media in Lagos yesterday, Gbadamosi claimed that some elements in authority had tagged his comments, which he regarded as mere opinion, as public incitement capable of creating ethnic uprising in the country.He said the tag was neither true nor represented what he meant to say.

Following the release of Sowore and Dasuki by the government, which coincided with the attack on Jonathan’s home in Bayelsa State where a soldier on duty died and others injured, Gbadamosi’s comment was reportedly twisted by the social media to mean that the release of Dasuki and Sowore was to deliberately divert public opinion from Jonathan’s ordeal.

Gbadamosi said the government of the day was becoming military in its approach to public criticism, which was never so under previous civilian administrations of Olusegun Obasanjo, the late Umaru Yar’Adua and Jonathan.“When Jonathan was in government, all manner of allegations, which were later found not to be true, were made by the then members of the opposition that are now in government, but nobody vilified them with security agents; but they are now repulsive to public criticism,” he said.

The former governorship aspirant added that the incumbent government was moving against any contrary opinion with a vicious and clear intent to intimidate and to silence the opposition.“If any action is capable of creating ethnic crisis in Nigeria, it is President Muhammadu Buhari’s appointment of all security, financial and major institutions’ heads in the country from a particular section of the country, in complete disregard to the tenets of the 1999 Constitution and principle of Federal Character, and not my harmless and innocent opinion.”

In another vein, the Group Managing Director, CFL Group, Mr. Lai Omotola, has called on Nigerians to come out courageously against the hate speech bill. He stressed that the intention behind the agenda must be abolished. “Those propagating the hate speech idea are naive, ignorant and not visionary. Once the freedom of speech is removed, Nigeria is no longer operating a democracy. The issue at stake in Nigeria today is about rule of law and not Sowore.

“We don’t submit ourselves to ethnicity, but to the constitution and until we begin to engage ourselves on the basis of the document to say that there is no human being is above the document we cannot say we have democracy.”