Time magazine staff writer in London, Astha Rajvanshi, unexpectedly locked her Twitter account @astharajvanshi yesterday following vitriolic attacks on her by people suspected to be supporters of Labour Party’s presidential candidate, Peter Obi.
Rajvanshi had written the citation of President-elect Bola Tinubu in the 2023 issue of the magazine’s 100 most influential people.
The Obidients, as Obi’s supporters call themselves, had subjected Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka to a similar smear campaign last week after the writer warned that their activities constituted a threat to democracy and the judiciary.
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Besides, Soyinka said the Obidients have worn their refusal to accept constructive criticism as a badge of honour and accused the LP of sowing seeds of fascism and generating a climate of fear in the country.
In the Time report, Rajvanshi described Tinubu as a “longtime political power broker”, who has had nearly two decades to prepare for the presidential election.
She said the former governor of Lagos is “aware of his inheritance” in the form of a “litany of crises in a fractured nation, including deep-rooted corruption, religious insurgencies, and shortages of cash, fuel, and power in a crumbling economy”.
But at the release of the magazine’s issue on Thursday, several Nigerians, particularly supporters of Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP), known as Obidients, subjected the journalist to intense criticism.
With a deluge of vitriol on her timeline, Rajvanshi resorted to locking her account on Twitter, but the battering continued on her Facebook and Instagram pages.
Rajvanshi was accused of laundering the image of Tinubu, while some others called her “the promoter of a man that rendered families hopeless due to heroin trafficking”.
A chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Femi Fani-Kayode, said on his Twitter account yesterday that Rajvashi locked her account because of unpleasant remarks Obidients made on her page.
“Simply for listing Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu as being amongst the top 100 most powerful people in the world, TIME magazine’s Astha has had to lock her Twitter account because of the hate speech and trolling that the followers of Peter Obi have subjected her to”, he posted.
Tinubu was declared the winner of the 25 February 2023 presidential election, with Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP and Peter Obi of the Labour Party coming behind as second and third runners-up respectively.
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However, dissatisfied with the outcome, Atiku and Obi went to court to challenge Tinubu’s victory.
The Nation
