…APC condemns Pat Utomi’s formation of shadow govt, describes him as intellectual drama king
IGNATIUS OKOROCHA and CYRIL MBAH, Abuja
Unhappy with the comments of former Presidential candidate of Labour Party (LP), Mr. Peter Obi in his validation speech on late elder statesman, Pa Edwin Clark, the President of the Senate, Godswill Akpabio challenged Mr Obi, telling him to resolve the crisis in his party before he can talk about national issues.
Akpabio’s statement was a direct response to Obi’s earlier comments on the life and times of the late elder statesman, Chief Edwin Clark.
Obi, while eulogizing Clark, had deplored the poor quality of leadership in the country, saying “the labour of our heroes past has been in vain.”
But Akpabio, while presiding over a valedictory plenary session in honour of the late Chief Clark on Thursday, lambasted Obi, describing his statement as reckless.
According to him, having failed to resolve the leadership crisis in the Labour Party, Obi lacked the moral ground to make such comments about national issues.
While insisting that the labour of Nigeria’s past heroes has not been in vain, Akpabio knocked Obi for “attempting to cause division with his mouth.”
“Those who are aspiring as presidential candidates want to cause division with their mouths using social media. Tell them to resolve the crisis they have in their small party before they come to talk about the larger Nigeria
“You cannot even resolve the crisis in that Labour Party. Is it the crisis of Boko Haram that you will come and resolve in Nigeria?,” Akpabio said.
The former Akwa Ibom State Governor boasted about what he termed his numerous achievements during his tenure as governor, insinuating that Obi, who was the 2023 presidential candidate of the Labour Party, had little to show for his eight years as governor of Anambra State.
“I would like us to be known for what we did when we had the opportunity. As I speak now, I can tell you about the dualized thoroughfares in my city. I can fly over us in my city. I can tell you about the best international hospitals in my city. I can tell you about the monuments of the government houses for the governor and deputies.
“I had one of the best digitalised governors’ offices. I can tell you about the free and compulsory education. I can tell you about the unity I brought in religion by sponsoring over 5,800 Muslims, over 12,000 to 15,000 Christians to Rome and to Jerusalem.
“But then those who are aspiring as presidential candidates want to cause division with their mouths using social media.
“Tell them to resolve the crisis in their small party before they come to talk about the larger Nigeria because the social media in Nigeria is not regulated,” Akpabio said.
Meanwhile, Nigerians have been advised not to take seriously the recent efforts of a former presidential candidate, Professor Pat Utomi to paint the present federal administration black through deliberate public misinformation and shadow boxing.
In a statement issued on Thursday and signed by Barrister Felix Morka, National Publicity Secretary, the All Progressives Congress said Prof. Utomi must be an intellectual drama king of sorts explaining that Utomi’s declaration of a “Big Tent Coalition Shadow Government” on May 5, 2025, “stands in direct contradiction and refutal of the very justification he advanced for the latest of his several “big bang” theories that have never materialized.”
The statement reads: “In his declaration, Utomi claimed that policy mis-steps of the current Federal Government had worsened poverty and that the government had resorted “to propaganda and the suppression of opposing views, arguing that the recent spate of defections to the All Progressives Congress (APC) provides further evidence that all is not well with democracy in Nigeria.”
“Utomi is, and has always been, a poster child of freedom of thought, speech, conscience, association, and even freedom of intellectual aggression.
Utomi has enjoyed and continues to enjoy his fullest constitutional right to think, say and act as he chooses. He continues to enjoy democratic choice freely, unconstrained and unrestrained.
He has gained global recognition as a serial promoter of “mega parties,” mega “coalitions” and “mega tents”, hindered only by the unrealism of his contraptions.
“The suggestion that President Bola Tinubu’s administration is suppressing opposing views is simply preposterous. Utomi’s unilateral declaration of a “shadow government”, in a presidential democracy, is, in and of itself, an exercise of democratic freedom and free speech, in the extreme.
“It is deeply disturbing and desperately dramatic for Utomi to liken Nigeria’s democratic experience to “fascist conditions” in Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany.
That approximation is reckless, irresponsible and insensitive and should be beneath a man of Utomi’s standing but has clearly cast reason and rationality aside for sensational and virulent discourse.
“The announcement of a “shadow government” by Utomi is stellar evidence of Nigeria’s flourishing democracy, a categorical demonstration of impunity of opposition actors, and the high tolerance of dissent by the Tinubu administration.
“Utomi’s partisan disorientation – his failed bid for the Delta State APC gubernatorial ticket in 2019, an unfulfilled stalwart of Labour Party (LP) in Peter Obi’s 2023 presidential campaign, and his several dead on arrival “third force” mega opposition gamble – has clearly taken a huge toll on the erudite Professor’s political judgment.
“That Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Peter Obi of LP both campaigned, like President Tinubu, to end the system of fuel subsidy, is not propaganda as Utomi alleges in his revisionist quibbles.
Rather, it is a statement of fact that both Atiku and Obi campaigned on that policy approach.
“Even as a political economist, Utomi continues to fumble through conversations on the question of an alternative approach to both policies.
Simply exploiting and dramatizing what are inevitable initial difficulties associated with the policies Nigerians have had to endure for sustainable growth and prosperity is not genius; it smacks of crass political opportunism and desperation.
“No democratic norm obligates a ruling party to build and teach opposition parties how to govern themselves. Just as there is no democratic tenet that prohibits a ruling party from accepting citizens who choose to join its membership.
APC bears no responsibility to administer the internal affairs of opposition parties and takes no responsibility for the dysfunction and seeming disintegration of the parties.
“It is mind-boggling how Utomi and his fellow opposition figures, who boast of superior knowledge of solutions to Nigeria’s complex problems and challenges, have been unable to sensibly and competently manage the internal affairs of their parties but continue to spew vile accusations against the APC without any shame.
And they want Nigerians to put their trust and destiny in their inept hands. Our people are far more discerning than that.
“The wave of defections into the APC, while indicative of the rudderless leadership of opposition parties, is a clear endorsement of the visionary and inclusive leadership of President Bola Tinubu, and the massive transformation that is now underway in our country.
“These defectors are citizens who have decided to be direct participants in the unfolding historic repositioning of our nation, who have elevated patriotism over partisanship and ready to place their hand on deck with this bold President of progress to steer the ship of the Nigerian state away from the brink to stable safer and prosperous grounds,” the APC statement concluded.
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