Minister of Aviation and Aarospace Development Festus Keyamo, has accused opposition figures of orchestrating videos showing the destruction of ruling-party campaign posters.
The Minister has called the incidents a calculated effort to portray President Bola Tinubu as unpopular ahead of the 2027 general election.
Minister Keyamo, said in a post on X that a video showing a man tearing down posters of the governing All Progressives Congress, (APC), had been staged for political effect.
The man, whom Keyamo described as an opposition-sponsored thug, was seen brandishing a weapon while removing the posters, according to the Minister.
“This is planned as a propaganda stunt because someone deliberately set a camera to record and circulate it,” Keyamo said, adding that comparable incidents were occurring in other parts of the country.
He said the videos were intended to create the impression that Nigerians had turned against President Tinubu and the APC.
“The interpretation and spin given to these incidents is that the President has been ‘rejected’ by ‘angry’ Nigerians,” he said.
“Meanwhile, this is just one voter amongst 93,469,008 registered voters in Nigeria.”
Keyamo also accused some journalists and online publishers of applying different standards to politically similar incidents, alleging that they had failed to condemn the destruction of APC posters while amplifying allegations of intimidation by ruling-party supporters.
He cited an incident in Lagos State last week in which two or three people were seen using posters bearing the president’s image to cover those of an opposition party.
Minister Keyamo said that act was also unjustifiable, but said it had received sharper coverage.
“Some prominent morning programmes on TV and paid blogs went to town to brand the guys ‘thugs of the ruling party’ and amplified the videos to high heavens,” he said, accusing them of raising alarms about intimidation and threats to democracy.
The Minister said he was not calling on APC supporters to respond in kind.
“This is not a call on the teeming APC supporters to retaliate in any form,” he said. “But this should prick the conscience of all men of goodwill.”
Keyamo also said the opposition’s objective was to depict the APC as unelectable and to lay the groundwork for disputing an expected defeat in the presidential election scheduled for Jan. 16, 2027.
He urged foreign observers to take notice of what he described as a coordinated opposition campaign, calling opposition parties “defeated, disorganised, disoriented and confused.”
Minister Keyamo said opposition parties had performed poorly in recent bye-elections across five regions of the country and predicted that they would face a similar outcome in 2027.
