November 11, 2018
Press Statement
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Loading ...…Says Buhari Presidency is Pushing Nigerians to the Wall
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) condemns in the strongest terms the
unleashing of a special security squad of army, police and paramilitary
agencies by the Muhammadu Buhari Presidency to physically harass our
Presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, at the Abuja airport, upon his
return from Dubai.
It was shocking when the deadly squad, in a Gestapo style attack, and
acting on ‘orders from above’ rushed our candidate immediately he landed
and attempted to physically manhandle him before invading his aircraft
with dangerous weapons to conduct a violent search.
While they did not find anything incriminating on our Presidential
candidate, this deadly squad, violently tampered with certain personal
documents and gadgets belonging to him, including some of his campaign
documents.
The PDP completely rejects such violence against the person of our
Presidential candidate by the Buhari Presidency, which we know has been
jittery over Atiku Abubakar’s soaring popularity since his emergence as
our candidate.
We invite the world to note that having failed to drag down our
Presidential candidate with spurious allegations and smear campaign, the
APC has now resorted to state-backed violence against him and must be
held responsible should any harm befall him or any member of his
campaign team.
The PDP is for peace, but we will not accept this recourse to violence,
which we believe is orchestrated to directly harm our Presidential
candidate, foist a siege mentality on the system and set the stage for
series of coordinated violence, ostensibly to truncate a peaceful
conduct of the 2019 general election.
The Buhari Presidency and the APC should bear in mind that this is an
attack on our democracy and the collective sensibility of the
overwhelming majority of Nigerians, across board, who have accepted the
choice of Atiku Abubakar as Nigeria’s next President and they will
vigorously deploy every means available in a democracy to defend him and
our democratic process.
Today, Atiku Abubakar, as a Presidential candidate, has the highest
demography of supporters and volunteers across our nation and we will
not hesitate to call them out in defence of democracy if another such
attempt is made against our candidate.
Nigeria is not a conquered territory and anybody that wants to foist a
totalitarian regime on our land will be firmly resisted
We invite President Buhari to recall that as a Presidential candidate,
he had occasions to travel out of the country and the government in
power never besieged or harassed him in any way. His administration
should therefore not introduce such violence in our democratic space.
Finally, the PDP counsels the APC and the Buhari Presidency to know that
power belongs to God and that the time has come for Nigerians to choose
a new President, for which they have collectively rallied around Atiku
Abubakar and that their resort to violence, smear campaign, character
assassination and rigging will not change this resolve.
Signed:
Kola Ologbondiyan
National Publicity Secretary
