By Samuel Ogidan
Former vice-president Atiku Abubakar yesterday warned the federal government on turning the country into a police state following the restrictions placed on the way of some All Progressives Congress (APC) governors and party members against attending the campaign rally for their Ekiti state counterpart.
This is even as he described the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan as “inept and incompetent,” saying that his government had deprived its citizens from access to jobs and education as manifested by the on-going closure of some tertiary institutions.
Atiku, in a statement from his media office, said the action of the PDP-led federal government in stopping the governors of Kano, Rivers and Edo from attending the APC governorship campaign rally in Ado-Ekiti yesterday, in a Gestapo-like manner, “is capable of turning Nigeria into a banana republic where fundamental rights of citizens are trampled upon with impunity.”
He said he was particularly miffed at the way the federal government had been dragging the military and police into politics, and warned that “the government must stop instigating state security agents paid from tax payers money against helpless, hapless and law abiding Nigerians.”
Atiku, who promised at the party’s recent national convention that he would lead the vanguard to unseat the Jonathan administration he described as “inept and incompetent,” enjoined “our gallant military men to remain focused on securing and protecting the territorial integrity of our great nation, especially in this time of terror attacks and insurgency across the country.”
He reminded Nigerians that “a government that deprives its citizens from access to jobs and education as manifested by the on-going closure of some tertiary institutions, such as polytechnics, to be shut for nearly a year, has alienated itself from the masses and will definitely suffer the repercussion at the polls, use of force or not.”
