Defend your country, PDP tells Nigerians



Ahead of the Febuary 16th Presidential election, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has charged Nigerians to brace up, defend and save the country from the alleged fascism being plotted by the Muhammadu Buhari Presidency and the All Progressives Congress (APC).


Kola Ologbondiyan, the National Publicity Secretary of PDP and the Director Media and Publicity, of PDP Presidential Campaign Organization while addressing journalists yesterday in Abuja, noted that, “Nigerians are already aware that the APC and the Buhari Presidency are not serious with campaigns ahead of the Presidential elections”


According to him, “they know that the APC and its candidate, President Buhari are seeking ways to enmesh the election in crisis, stalemate the electoral process and pave the way for rigging and actualization of plots to perpetuate President Buhari in office”


Buttressing his point, Ologbondiyan claimed that, “with the prevailing state of our polity; the flagrant violation of our constitution, continuous attacks on institutions of democracy and principle of separation of powers, consistent abuse of human rights, erosion of personal freedom, uninhibited extra-judicial killings, illegal detention, attack on peaceful protesters, clampdown on the media and vocal members of the Civil Society, as well as the unleashing of brutality on innocent citizens, that have characterized the Buhari Presidency; it is manifestly clear that our nation is on a rapid descent into fascism, which we must all resist with our votes”


“Today, our freedom and personal liberty as a people are under threat. Our rights as constitutionally guaranteed as citizens are about to be completely taken away. Our last lines of defence as a free people; our legislature and our judiciary are also under siege, he added.


He also said that, “We are all witnesses to the unrelenting assault on the institution of the judiciary and the courts by the Buhari Presidency and the APC. This siege on the Judiciary has now come to a climax with the widely condemned attempt by the Buhari Presidency and the APC to forcefully remove the Chief Justice of the Nigeria, (CJN) Justice Walter Onnoghen.
He claimed that, ” this ignoble act is with the view to replace Justice Onnoghen with a pliable CJN that will execute the plot to annex the court and use them to curtail freedom of expression and to silence opposition members as well as perceived opponents of the Buhari administration ahead of the February election”.


“Such attempt at annexations is to subject judicial officers under the control of the Attorney General to determine and even write judgments on political and human rights cases and cover atrocities of anti-democratic forces, he added.


The PDP spokesman also recalled how the Buhari Presidency allegedly, “in a widely condemned ‘sting operation’ in 2016, used the Directorate of State Services (DSS) to hound and round up sitting Supreme Court and High Court judges in Nigeria.


According to him, “Since that ‘sting operation’, our judiciary Nigeria has remained under siege with the agents of the Buhari Presidency and the APC directly interfering in cases and trying to direct the rulings of courts.


“Nigerians and the world can recall also how agents of the Buhari Presidency and the APC, last year, besieged and attempted to forcefully remove the elected leadership of the National Assembly; the symbol of our democracy. Also, the Buhari Presidency used apparatus of state powers to seal the legislative complex, unleashed thugs to invade the Senate chamber, disrupted legislative proceedings and forcefully carted away the mace, the emblem of the sovereignty and authority of the people.


Ologbondiyan said, ” in our slide into fascism, Nigerians are daily falling victims of extreme torture, illegal detention, extra-judicial and arbitrary killings, forceful crackdown on peaceful protesters and mass burial by unrestrained agents of the state, as detailed in the 2017/2018 Amnesty International (AI) Human Rights Report”.


“This is in addition to the widely condemned foisting of Mrs. Amina Zakari, President Buhari’s relation by marriage, as head of the collation of results of the Presidential poll as well as plot to use the Police as suppressive tool to intimidate voters and assist APC agents to unleash violence and manipulate the process, for which President Buhari is bent on retaining the overtly partisan Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris even when his tenure had expired, he said.
Ologbondiyan also claimed that, ” this administration has turned out to be the most vicious in the history of our nation. Nigerians and the world must therefore rise in condemnation of this dangerous drift towards, Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, Idi Amin’s Uganda, Charles Taylor’s Liberia and Than Shwe’s Burma”.


He therefore charged all Nigerians to “defend our nation and save her from fascism by voting out President Buhari on February 16, 2019”.

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