As condemnation over Tuesday’s killing of peaceful protesters by suspected security personnel in Lagos rages, caucus of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the House of Representatives have demanded that President Muhammadu Buhari should urgently design a roadmap to put the country back on track.
The caucus said it has risen in solidarity with the Nigerian people to condemn the brazen attack on armless citizens who were only expressing their fundamental human rights as permitted in every democratic society and also demanded that the president address the nation.
The statement on Thursday said the caucus led by Kingsley Chinda, after an emergency meeting to review the state of the nation, resolved to frown at the “mindless killing of Nigerians, who were already demonstrating against unresolved cases of extra judicial murders orchestrated by government forces and commiserates with families of all those policemen who lost their lives whilst praying for the repose of their souls”.
The statement read in part: “Leaning on the widely held consensus of inequality that has gripped the nation, the PDP green chamber caucus wondered why the leadership of the nation instead of heeding to citizen’s call for responsive leadership would resort to watching machinery of state sniff life out of harmless agitators, in a decade of reasonable engagement and citizens participation has become a courted virtue in other climes.”
While calling for the withdrawal of the military from the streets of Lagos and other parts of the country where human rights’ abuses are reported, it urged the federal government to consider the agitators’ demands, which include the suspension of the ill-timed response of renaming FSARS to SWAT.
The statement further reads: “The PDP caucus agrees that there is need to re jig our abusive implementation of federalism, calling to mind the need to engender a national conversation by adopting the 2014 National Conference report for consideration by the National Assembly, as well as constitutional amendment to divest power and resources from the centre to states and local government areas.
“The president should set up a National Judicial Panel of enquiry into citizen’s grievances; establish a National Compensation Fund for victims of police brutality; and an unemployment benefit fund to be contributed by the three levels of governments to cushion the biting effect of the downward economic realities in the country.”
