Peter Obi, presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), has said he never described the 2023 election as a \u201creligious war\u201d as heard in a leaked audio conversation between him and David Oyedepo, the founder of Winners Chapel.<\/p>\n
Report has it that Obi had said the audio clip was doctored, adding that at no time did he \u201cever say, think, or even imply that the 2023 election is, or was a religious war\u201d.<\/p>\n
Commenting again on the matter during an Arise Television programme on Monday, Obi admitted that he called the cleric to solicit votes.<\/p>\n
\u201cCall it whatever you want to call it. Whatever anyone wants to make of it. I am not a religious bigot. Do you think I can just pick a phone and say \u2018religious war\u2019? No, I was even begging the bishop to help me ask his people to vote, which was what I was doing for six months \u2014 begging,\u201d Obi said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wasn\u2019t saying \u2018catch him\u2019, \u2018kill him\u2019, \u2018force it\u2019. I was even begging. That shows that I continued to look for votes by begging. There were so many things we tried to do but they were not okay.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet me tell you; those who have been trying to manipulate Nigerians have been doing it. But it is coming to an end. The people they have been manipulating are dying of hunger.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey will soon know who is the religious or tribal bigot. I am not one. I have just given you an example of how I built mosques. Till today, no non-Muslim governor has sent more people to Mecca than me.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can never say it (election) is a religious war. Because it is not. There was a conversation. But I never said it was a religious war. What for? I am surrounded by people.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf there was ever an instance where the presidential candidate and his deputy work as brothers, it is me and Datti. And I know and we never stop talking about it.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor the first time in the history of Nigeria, we have a presidential candidate, running mate and party chairman who were born after Nigeria\u2019s independence.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe must save this country and he (Datti) knows my commitment to it. I can\u2019t do all these with the background of religious war.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Peter Obi, presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), has said he never described the 2023 election as a \u201creligious war\u201d as heard in a leaked audio conversation between him and David Oyedepo, the founder of Winners Chapel. Report has it that Obi had said the audio clip was doctored, adding that at no time […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1370,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peoplesforumonline.com.ng\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peoplesforumonline.com.ng\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peoplesforumonline.com.ng\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peoplesforumonline.com.ng\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peoplesforumonline.com.ng\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1369"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/peoplesforumonline.com.ng\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1371,"href":"https:\/\/peoplesforumonline.com.ng\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1369\/revisions\/1371"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peoplesforumonline.com.ng\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peoplesforumonline.com.ng\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peoplesforumonline.com.ng\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peoplesforumonline.com.ng\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}