Peter Obi, Bishop Oyedepo’s Leaked Audio Tape Stirs Controversy as LP Spokespersons Contradict Each Other

By Uche Amunike

A leaked audio tape of a telephone conversation between the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi and Bishop Oyedepo of the Living Faith Church Worldwide, Saturday, has stirred up controversy in the polity, leading to Obi’s critics accuse him of playing a politics of religion and ethnicity, just before the presidential election was held.

In the leaked audio clip, Peter Obi was heard telling Bishop Oyedepo to help spread his message to Christians both in the North Central and South East. While addressing him as ‘Daddy’, Obi told Oyedepo that the just concluded presidential poll was a religious war.

As a result of this trend of conversation between Peter Obi and Bishop Oyedepo, critics of the Labour Party presidential flag bearer, who had accused him of engaging in ethnical and religious politics, seemed to have had their claims authenticated. Obi, on his part has asked them to provide proof for their claims.

The controversy surrounding the leaked audio between Peter Obi and Bishop Oyedepo has seemingly birthed doubts in the Labour Party camp as comments made by its spokespersons were indeed contradictory, leading to further controversies.

After the audio tape was leaked on blogs, Facebook and twitter, Peter Obi’s supporters described it as deepfake, meaning that it was doctored with artificial intelligence tools.

On Sunday morning, however, Labour Party’s Spokesperson for the Presidential Campaign Team, Kenneth Okonkwo confirmed the audio tape to be authentic, but however gave the Peter Obi, Bishop Oyedepo conversation a very different interpretation.

Hear him: ‘Firstly, the context of the conversation was aptly put by Bishop Oyedepo when he said, ‘All Nigerians have (an) equal stake in this nation, nobody has the right to claim that he is dashing something to someone,’ Mr Okonkwo tweeted.

He continued: ‘H. E. Peter Obi was simply urging the Bishop to help him push this message of (an) equal stake of all Nigerians in the Nigerian project to his people and the Christendom because the politicians of the other party is carrying on this campaign as if it is a religious war.’

He went on to accuse the All Progressives Party (APC) of  attempting to change the narrative of the audio conversation, thereby making it look as though Obi was making a religious statement. He maintained that they spinned the conversation to create an entirely different impression from what it really was, while accusing them of initiating what looks like the religious battle of the ballots by running a Muslim-Muslim presidential ticket in a country as religiously diverse as Nigeria.

On his part, Head of the Obi-Datti Media Office, Diran Onifade completely contradicted Okonkwo by saying the audio tape was fake. Hear him: ‘All these are meant to serve no other purpose than egregious mischief aimed at demarketing Peter Obi; if the goal is to create a credibility problem, the ploy has failed woefully,’ Mr Onifade said, also describing the audio as deepfake

‘Peter Obi has long been on record as the only presidential candidate who has urged the Nigerians electorate not to vote for him on the basis of religion or tribe’, he stated.

This has left question marks as to why the two spokesmen were giving different statements.

Bishop Oyedepo on his part, has responded that he did not campaign for any candidate, but only played advisory roles whenever they approached him.

Hear him: ‘Nobody had ever told me what to say in this world. No. I have never campaigned for anybody or spoken on anybody’s behalf and I will not do that till I go to heaven.’
He continued: ‘There is no (political) party in this country that didn’t come to me for prayers and for advice. I advised them, some they didn’t take. Those who chose to take it see results; those who said no are going about it (laughs). If you still come again, I will still tell you, it doesn’t change.’