EU election report names Keyamo, Fani-Kayode as misleading citizens during election
By Jeph Ajobaju, Chief Copy Editor
Festus Keyamo (former Labour Minister of State) and Femi Fani-Kayode (former All Progressives Congress (APC) Campaign spokesman) have been named in the report of the European Union Observation Mission (EU-EOM) as among those who spread fake news to mislead Nigerians during the last election.
“There was an increased incidence of misleading information in the days leading up to and during the election. In many cases, false reports were spread by well-known personalities associated with political parties,” the report said, per Daily Post.
“On February 12, Festus Keyamo from APC promoted information published by a suspicious website, accusing Peter Obi of bribery. The story quickly became viral and was in a few hours debunked.
“Femi Fani-Kayode, a former minister of aviation and an APC party member, made a claim on February 11, 2023, that the PDP presidential candidate [Atiku] Abubakar had a secret meeting with serving military generals in Abuja.
“He accused Atiku of wanting to incite chaos, provoke a coup d’état, and establish a new and unconstitutional order.
“Kayode posted this claim across multiple social media platforms, and it garnered 281.2k total impressions. The next day, he posted that the Army denied reports about a meeting between its officers and Atiku.”
Dubious reputations
Besides the report, both Keyamo and Fani-Kayode, who are lawyers, have reputations among Nigeria as agent provocateurs who peddle propaganda and lies to achieve their objectives.
News filtered earlier this year that Keyamo, Fani-Kayode, and Bayo Onanuga (former APC Campaign Media Director General) may be on the list of those being considered for visa ban by the United States and the United Kingdom for their toxic statements during the election campaign.
Keyamo
A lawsuit Keyamo filed against Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar was dismissed by the Abuja Federal High Court last month as being “frivolous”.
The court fined him N10 million.
Keyamo also characteristically downplayed – without disputing the facts document in – the EU-EOM report, which has been praised by local election monitoring groups as objective, comprehensive, and accurate.
“It is only a forensic examination of the entire process by the judiciary that can determine the extent to which the supposed ‘irregularities’ affected the outcome of the elections. And there are legal rules already laid down to achieve this,” Keyamo tweeted on Monday in reaction to the report, according to Vanguard.
“The EU report is NOT (and cannot be) a document that tells you who won or lost an election. It only reports the ‘irregularities’ noticed and recommends improvement in future elections.
“Therefore, all the hoopla over that EU report is neither here nor there when it comes to legitimizing or delegitimizing the government of the day. That power or responsibility belongs to the Judiciary.”
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Atiku blasts Keyamo’s lies and ‘scheming’ to get a job in Tinubu’s admin
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Fani-Kayode
In March this years, British Deputy High Commissioner to Nigeria, Ben Llewellyn-Jones, cautioned Fani-Kayode against making incendiary statements, per reporting by Vanguard.
“Let’s be specific, there were some people, like Femi Fani-Kayode, what is he saying and why is he saying it? I don’t understand. It is wrong from my perspective that he will speak on behalf of a party and that party does not distance itself from him and say stop doing that. It is wrong to say that,” Llewellyn-Jones said.
But Fani-Kayode doubled down on his position by insulting the diplomat.
“These are my personal views and I am constrained to express them given the fact that one @benllewellynjo1, a misguided, mischievous and clearly unlettered Englander who does not know his place, threw away all caution and mentioned my name in his inglorious commentary,” Fani-Kayode wrote on Twitter.
“I would advise this Ben, who I am told is the Deputy High Commissioner of the UK to Nigeria, to keep his dirty nose out of our internal affairs. Nigeria stopped being a British colony 63 years ago and we need no lessons from him on how to run our affairs or conduct our politics.
“I know that his preferred candidate did not win the presidential election but that does not mean he should cross the line and take liberties with us here.
“I wonder who the hell he thinks he is? I am not one of those Nigerians that bows, shakes, shivers and trembles before the British or indeed any other foreigner.
“And unlike most I do not need any validation or endorsement from him or his ilk and neither can I be intimidated by his veiled threat of a visa ban. Frankly I could not care less.
“I would however take this opportunity to assure him that regardless of his views and desire to compel us to accept their godless so-called “humanist” and “libertarian” values and introduce evil practices and policies such as same-sex marriage in our country this will never be the case.
“My aversion for sodmites remains as constant as the northern star and whether he likes it or not we will never allow a sodomite to be our President.
“Neither will we accept lessons in decency, etiquette, what to say or how to speak from a fading British civil servant and a man that represents a nation that has committed more atrocities than perhaps any other in the history of humanity.
“I advise this little Englander to respect himself and remain a silent observer when it comes to the politics of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. As a nation we are not a poodle of the British and we came of age 63 years ago.
“He should be more concerned about the shrinking fortunes of a once “Great Britain” and the systemic racism, inherent injustice and insufferable arrogance that is entrenched in the British establishment and society than in the intra party politics of Nigeria.”
“He should also be more concerned with the efforts of his nation to bring us one step closer to WW3 given the unfolding events in Ukraine.”