Lawyer and political activist Deji Adeyanju has opened up on his past encounters with Labour Party’s 2023 presidential candidate, Peter Obi, describing him as a “political fraud” while reacting to a defamation suit filed against him.
Adeyanju made the revelation on Friday morning during Channels Television’s Morning Brief programme, where he narrated how his early excitement about Obi’s candidacy later turned into disappointment.
“I’m just expressing my thoughts about why the opposition should come together and unite against the criminal APC and roguish APC government that always rig elections, that if the opposition is divided, that there’s no way they can win,” Adeyanju said.
He explained that the idea of Obi’s candidacy initially appealed to him.
“The idea of the Obi candidacy excited me, and I said that he needed a buy-in of Atiku and Konkosu. I even urged Konkosu to deputize Obi. I urged Atiku to step down for Peter Obi,” he stated.
According to Adeyanju, Obi persistently sought to meet with him after his comments.
“So then Peter Obi, all of a sudden, started trying to reach out to me, to meet me. But at that time, I was out of the country… So he was persistently reaching out to me, and I was avoiding him,” he said.
Adeyanju said he eventually met Obi through one of his aides but was left unimpressed by Obi’s defense over corruption allegations.
“I now made some observations about the things that he has been accused of doing in the past… Then I also raised the issue about these issues of him using state resources in Anambra to invest in his family business. His explanation to me in his defense was that he had resigned from the company before he became a governor. I was flabbergasted… I was completely disgusted.”
He further alleged that Obi attempted to offer him an envelope during the meeting.
“Then he got into a room and said, oh, please, he’s coming. That he wants to go inside the room and he has something for me. So he brought one envelope or something like that. And said, no, this is just a small thing. It’s just for company. I said, oh, I laughed… I said, God forbid.”
The activist also criticized Obi’s political judgment during the Ekiti election, alleging that his supporters responded with online attacks.
“I criticized and said, you should be in Ekiti and not in Egypt. And I said, because you want to be president, you must go and campaign for your candidate and try to win… Some of these young boys that are around him… they insulted me… I said, me?”
He accused Obi’s supporters, popularly known as Obidients, of political intolerance.
“We cannot have a situation in our country or in our polity where political extremism becomes the order of the day… After the Buharis, the obedient mob is the most toxic political movement that we have ever witnessed in this country. They’re threatening Supreme Court judges, Court of Appeal court judges, threatening artists, threatening Professor Wole Showinka, insulting everybody in this country. Because of Peter.”
On Obi’s political character, Adeyanju maintained,
“What are the things I said? I said he’s a political fraud. That he’s parading himself as a messiah. Of course he is a political fraud… The only thing that I forgot to say, among the things that he should not add to his defamation suit, is that he’s a political prostitute. He’s a political prostitute.”
He added that Obi’s current political moves contradict his earlier stance.
“Look at what he said about the people that he wanted to defeat in the last election. He said they operate a structure of criminality. But today he’s with them. He has one leg in PDP, they are discussing with him. Another leg in ADC. And he’s still a member of a Labour Party. So if you do, it’s worse.”
Adeyanju insisted that his remarks were truthful and therefore defensible.
“In a civil suit or criminal suit of defamation, justification, truth is a defense,” he said.
