Keyamo to Dele Momodu: Critiquing policy statements not your forte… stick to praise-singing

Festus Keyamo, the spokesman of the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential campaign council, says Dele Momodu should stick to “praise-singing” instead of critiquing policy statements.

On Sunday, Momodu, the publisher of Ovation magazine, described the manifesto of Bola Tinubu, presidential candidate of APC, as an appropriation of the late MKO Abiola’s legacy.

The 80-page manifesto, tagged ‘Renewed Hope 2023’, was unveiled on Friday.

Reacting in a statement issued on Monday, Keyamo said Momodu could not show evidence of copy-and-paste in the policy statement.

 “It appears the Peoples Democratic Party is unaware that Nigerians have since dismissed it as an unserious and broken opposition party. If nothing at all, its latest press release signed by chief Dele Momodu attests to its crass unseriousness,” he said.

“The PDP’s attempt to pooh-pooh our Action Plan only ended up as nothing but a joke. Even more pathetic and disastrous is the situation chief Momodu has found himself in today. That is, having to stage a complete somersault in a cheap hatchet job against our highly revered candidate, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, simply because he needed to impress his new paymasters.

“Let us remind the turncoat, Dele Momodu, of what he said about the same Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu only on October 26, 2019 in a column published in Thisday newspaper entitled, “Bola Tinubu And His Date With Destiny In 2023”: ‘I have no illusions that Tinubu will definitely perform as president of Nigeria, if he ever contests and wins. He has a knack for identifying brilliant minds and fertile brains, and the ability to nurture them to greatness. He has demonstrated this repeatedly and almost endlessly. Examples abound without doubt.’

“What is obvious is that even the hirelings of the PDP like Momodu are clear believers in Asiwaju’s ability and capacity to deliver on his promises but have decided to play politics this time around.

“Our expectation is that our action plan would inspire other political parties, especially the intellectually bankrupt PDP, to engage us constructively on the initiatives and programmes we intend to implement. 

“True to type, PDP has again reacted, in our view, without even reading the content on the document. All they are interested in is the title of our message, not the quality of our ideas. We are extremely amused, but not entirely shocked. This only demonstrates once again their incurable incapacity to act as a credible opposition to the ruling party.

“Dele Momodu should have rather stayed in his accustomed lane of praise-singing socialites and the likes instead of dabbling in the more demanding job of critiquing policy statements. It is clearly not his forte! The quality of his recent write-up is a testament that his team is not made up of experts in governance and policy formulation. He must have gathered his team of photographers and video editors to read through a document that is far beyond their tabloid-centered minds.

“One would have expected Dele Momodu to make clear comparative analyses between Hope ‘93 campaign document of MKO Abiola and the Renewed Hope document of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu. He goofed miserably. He was just huffing and puffing without substance. A write-up that was intended to be a critique of a document on its supposed lack of details ended up itself as an empty shell.”