You were observers, not investigators, Keyamo slams EU over elections report

Former Minister of State for Labour and Employment, Festus Keyamo, has criticised the report of the European Union Election Observation Missions (EU-EOM) which indicted him for peddling fake news days to the 2023 general election in Nigeria.

Keyamo, in a statement on his Twitter handle on Wednesday, claimed the report did not deserve his response because “it was so presumptuous and outside their mandate”.

EU-EOM said Keyamo and his ally, former Aviation Minister, Femi Fani-Kayode, propagated fake news ahead of the 2023 general elections.

Recall that the two chieftains of the All Progressives Congress (APC) were in the Presidential Campaign Committee of the ruling party’s standard bearer, Bola Tinubu, who is now the President.

Keyamo wrote, “The part of the EU report that asserts that there was a single incident throughout the whole campaign where I retweeted a news item by a ‘suspicious website’ does not deserve my response.

“(Because) it is so presumptuous and outside their mandate and exposes a deep-seated bias about how the so-called observers went about their assignment. However, for the education of the gullible and unfortunate ones who are jubilating over such a poor report, I will say a word or two.

“Firstly, their assignment is to observe and report. Their mandate does not extend to investigating claims made by candidates against one another and reaching conclusions on such claims. They are not journalists nor are they law-enforcement officers.

“They are just observers. Declaring any news as ‘fake’ when they don’t have alternative facts or findings by institutions statutorily empowered to investigate such claims is tantamount to taking sides on the campaign trail and trying to defend a candidate against another. And that is very disappointing and unfortunate on the part of these observers.”