The Peoples Democratic Party has picked on Cardinal Anthony Okogie, a former president of the Christian Association of Nigeria, as a reply to his comments accusing Yoruba monarchs for being deceptive to former president Goodluck Jonathan.
Cardinal Okojie
In an interview granted by the Lagos state PDP publicity secretary, Taofik Gani, the cleric was berated. Gani described the accusation as a deliberate attempt to embarrass Jonathan and his party.
The PDP noted that if Jonathan had visited their domains without paying a courtesy visit on the royal fathers, it would have been disrespectful to the monarchs.
“With due regard to Cardinal Okogie, it may be coincidental that he is a progressive but a hidden politician in religion, who believes that the people in the APC are progressives. But I want to say without any iota of contradiction that it has always been convenient for Cardinal Okogie to support the APC and we know all these people. We also have them in the PDP who support us.
“So, we wouldn’t blame Cardinal Okogie. We have professionals, activists, religious leaders, who are also sympathetic to the PDP cause. What Okogie said, therefore, was deliberate; just to embarrass the PDP and the former President. The royal fathers have their traditional role which is not to have anybody as beloved. Everybody in their dynasty is regarded as their subjects.
“That Jonathan accorded them that regard of being royal fathers and that he consequently got their blessings was not wrong of the ex-President. On the contrary, they (the APC) were malicious against some royal fathers, which the PDP cautioned against,” he said.
Gani stressed that President Muhammadu Buhari had also visited some royal fathers. He questioned Okogie for not criticising Oba Rilwan Akiolu of Lagos for supporting a candidate of the APC during the last governorship election in the state.
He said that the party knows the role the Oba played. He asked if Okogie had forgotten that fact? He added that the cardinal would have generalised that all the Obas misled all the politicians. He emphasised that the xenophobic statement made by the Oba of Lagos could have destroyed the country.
Gani said: “It is now the same xenophobia that the APC is quick to impose on our leader, Bode George. But it was the APC who influenced the verbal attacks through the Oba of Lagos, who was an obvious member of the APC by his actions.
“Cardinal Okogie should please maintain his role as a religious leader. He is someone who is respected; he should be wary of coming into the murky waters of politics. What has happened has happened.”
He added that Okogie’s job as a religious leader was to know that it was destined that Jonathan was going to lose the election.
The South-West chapter of the All Progressives Congress had sometime agoconfronted Jonathan over his visit to Yoruba monarchs ahead of the March 28 presidential election.
In a recent interview with the cardinal, he was quoted to have said: “Did you see the photograph I saw; you saw him in the midst of obas; you saw the way they pointed their sticks (at him). If you are a Yoruba man, do they (monarchs) pray with that kind of thing? No way! ‘You want prayer? We will give you prayer.’ This means they were deceptive.”
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