Siege to Saraki, Ekweremadu’s residences assault on democracy – Makarfi

Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential hopeful, Senator Ahmed Makarfi, has described the siege on the residences of the Senate President, Bukola Saraki and his deputy, Ike Ekeweremadu on Tuesday by the detachments of the Nigerian Police Force as dangerous and primitive act that constitutes very serious threat to democracy in our country.
The former PDP National Caretaker Committee chairman said the development, which was ostensibly done to stop the principal officers from presiding over the day’s session, was rather very sad and disturbing incidence.
He expressed sadness that the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) had condescended using brute force to prevent people from exercising both freedom of choice and association.
Makarfi said alleged that the siege was to stop the officers from superintending over plenary and thus nib in the bud the planned defection of some members to the main opposition party. But the attempt failed as the defection of some Senators from the ruling party to the PDP eventually occurred.
“It is a clear breach of one of the fundamental tenets of Presidential democracy, which provides for separation of powers. It also constitutes a serious abuse of the fundamental human rights of the targeted individuals, both the presiding officers and the defectors respectively, because the right to associate is inalienable.
“Sadder still, is the fact that this impunity and crass disrespect to legality and constitutionality are being perpetrated under a government that is itself a beneficiary of respect for the rule of law by the then PDP government.
“That the nation’s parliamentarians and their leadership could brazenly be treated like criminals under a democratic setting simply because of political differences is truly an unsettling descent into wanton abuse of power by those sworn to ‘preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria’. This descent into the abyss must be halted and reversed”, he said in a statement signed by his media aide, Mukhtar Zubairu Sirajo.
He decried the strong-arm tactic adopted by the Police describing it as a setback to Nigeria’s developing democracy adding that it further heighten the fears of many that democracy is being dangerously driven into the precipice by the APC-led federal government.
While urging the Police and other security agencies to be professional in the discharge of their duties, Senator Makarfi appealed to Nigerians to remain peaceful but vigilant and do everything within the law to stand up against forces bent on reversing gains so far recorded since the return of democracy.