By Jennifer Y Omiloli
The Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) has described the order given by President Buhari to be ‘ruthless’ against anyone that tries to truncate the electoral process as a licence to kill order.
Buhari had earlier said at the All Progressives Congress’ (APC) national caucus meeting that: “I really gave the military and police order to be ruthless… Anybody who thinks he has enough influence in his locality to lead a body of thugs to snatch ballot boxes or disturbs the voting system will do so at the expense of his own life.”
On Monday, in a statement by Kola Ologbondiyan, the PDP Director of Media and Publicity, the party said: “We do hope that this call by President Buhari is not a camouflage for the fake soldiers mobilised by the APC to shoot at innocent Nigerians, snatch ballot boxes and execute their rigging plans on the election day. It is indeed a licence to kill, which should not come from any leader of any civilized nation.
“The underlining fact to the above is that President Buhari and APC leaders, upon getting to their voting constituencies last Saturday, realised that there is a nationwide rejection of Buhari’s re-election bid, and this has thrown them into a panic mode.
“Intelligence available to us shows that the Buhari Presidency has directed the leadership of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to immediately reshuffle the Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs) in order to deploy compromised officials to manipulate the electoral process in President Buhari’s favour, as they did with the police shortly before February 16.”
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The main opposition party stressed that Buhari’s threat to the lives of Nigerians was a direct call for jungle justice and attempt to divert public attention from their closed session where details of their dastardly plot to truncate our democratic process will be perfected.
Ologbondiyan added that the PDP was also aware of the pressure being mounted by the presidency on INEC to cancel elections in some states and make others inconclusive so as to achieve Buhari’s objectives of a staggered election not minding the crisis such would trigger across the federation.
According to him, “President Buhari must however bear in mind that his resort to threats and scaremongering will not deter Nigerians from coming out en masse to vote him out of office on February 23.
“We are aware that President Buhari, who had earlier boasted that nobody can ‘unseat’ him, is bent on using every dictatorial and tyrannical act to truncate the process of a free, fair and credible election.
“We want Nigerians and the international community to hold President Buhari personally responsible for any electoral crisis, otherwise he will as usual, claim that he was not aware of the plots and transfer the blame to Adams Oshiomhole and Rotimi Amaechi.”
