Protest: Utomi heads to ICC over Onanuga ,Says: ‘my life at stake’

Unless an unreserved apology and retraction is offered immediately, President Bola Tinubu, may have to explain himself before the International Criminal Court (ICC), at The Hague in The Netherlands, where Pat Utomi, has threatened to head to, armed with a petition against the Federal Government, over the threat to his life.

The development marked the addition of an international dimension to the ongoing planned protest in Nigeria, following the allegation by the Presidency that Utomi, Nigeria’s foremost Professor of Political Economy, banker and social critic is not only behind the event which is expected to kick off on August 1 and end on August 10, but actually plotting to instigate an upheaval akin to a civilian coup in the country.

The allegation by Abuja, came from Bayo Onanuga, spokesman to President Bola Tinubu, who implicated the foremost academic in the said plot, in which he also named Peter Obi, presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in the February 25, 2023 election, and his supporters as the ring-leader, for which the former Governor of Anambra State, has demanded an apology and payment of N5billion as damages to prevent a legal action for defamation.

Onanuga, using his X platform on Saturday, wrote: “Obi should be held responsible for anarchy. Don’t be fooled: the malcontents planning to stage nationwide protests are supporters of Peter Obi, the failed presidential candidate of the Labour Party. And he should be held responsible for whatever crisis emanates from the action.

“The protest planners are also the same people who were instigated by IPOB leader Nnamdi Kanu to launch the destructive ENDSARS protest in Nigeria in October 2020. ENDSARS began as a genuine protest by youths against the Police Special Anti-Robbery Squad, notorious for its high-handedness. IPOB members planning to extricate the South East region from Nigeria infiltrated the protest and hijacked it for their own agenda.

“Lagos still bears the scar of the malicious destruction by IPOB elements until today. Two years after ENDSARS, the IPOB and the gullible innocents joined the Labour Party in 2022 to support Peter Obi, a sympathiser of their cause. They are the people spreading the hashtags ‘EndBadGovernance’, ‘Tinubu Must Go,’ and ‘Revolution2024’.”

“They are not democrats but anarchists. They are attempting to call out our people via propaganda because their Messiah, Peter Obi, failed to win the Presidency in the 2023 election. As bad losers, they don’t have the patience to wait for another election in 2027; they would rather destabilise Nigeria by staging a civilian coup against President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

“If they understand the meaning of their hashtags, they will realise they are clarion calls for treason. Wanting to end an elected government is high treason. Wanting revolution is a call for a coup d’etat, which is also high treason. I have been on the trail of one of the protest planners, who is nameless but claims to have an internet radio station, PTM100.88 Abuja.”

“I have been on the trail of one of the protest planners, who is nameless but claims to have an internet radio station, PTM100.88 Abuja. The anonymous person joined X in August 2022 and has 520 followers today, among whom are FS Yusuf, another rabid Obi supporter, and Professor Pat Utomi, a Labour Party chief and a guy on X who goes by the pseudonym Peter Obi’s First Son. PTM’s profile image has someone holding the inscription` Certificate Forger Not My President, ‘ with a photo of Peter Obi as an inset. Only Obi’s supporters will be talking about certificate forgery long after the Supreme Court dismissed the allegation.”

But a visibly disturbed Utomi, while appearing as a guest of Prime Time, a publica affairs programme on Arise News Television, on Tuesday, told his host that he was serious about approaching the ICC with a petition against not only Onanuga, but Tinubu, his boss because the allegation represented a plot to deliberately to go after his life.

His words: “I’m going to give him enough leeway, because you know, sometimes you have to wake up from sleep. I’m going to give him enough room to wake and realise his mistake and then speak truth to himself, if not my lawyers in Nigeria, my lawyers in the US – look, people forget that I was one of those who fought very hard to bring about the International Criminal Court – the ICC.

“There is no denying it. When Abacha was in office, I escaped two assassination attempts from Abacha in this country. When I went on sabbatical just as I have gone now, I was at the Harvard Business School, I met editorial boards, I was travelling all over the US, canvassing for an international criminal court for leaders that act in certain ways that amount to genocide against their people.

“When I went before one of the biggest newspapers of the world at the time – The Christian Science Monitor, in Boston, in January 1997 and laid my case for why we should take leaders to the International Criminal Court, they said to me, Pat, look, that can never happen. You’re being idealistic. Two years later the Rome Treaty passed for an International Criminal Court.

“If I have to go on another route for another one, I will, because we need to bring back sanity to this country. The agents of state can’t be sources of falsehood and hate speech. It’s not acceptable. Nigeria can’t fall that low.