Pat Utomi, a Nigerian professor of political economy, has threatened to petition the International Criminal Court (ICC), at the Hague over the allegation by the federal government that he was one of the sponsors of the planned protest in the country.
Utomi noted that only an unreserved apology and retraction of the comment by Bayo Onanuga, spokesman to President Bola Tinubu, who made the allegation, could stop the move.
Onanuga, in a message on his X platform last week accused Utomi and Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in the 2023 election, and his supporters as those behind the planned protest against the current administration headed by Bola Tinubu.
“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”, part of Onanuga’s message read.
But a visibly disturbed Utomi, while appearing as a guest of Prime Time, a public affairs programme on Arise News Television yesterday, 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 go after his life.
Read also: Obi threatens Onanuga with a N5bn defamation suit over ‘protest sponsor’ statement
According to Utomi, “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 up and realise his mistake and then speak the 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 the state can’t be sources of falsehood and hate speech. It’s not acceptable. Nigeria can’t fall that low”.
