Politics
The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, has said that Nigeria has become a fascist state under President Muhammadu Buhari. It called on Nigerians to defend themselves from fascism.
The party’s National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, said this during a media briefing in Abuja on Tuesday.
Ologbondiyan alleged that Nigerians were daily becoming victims of extreme torture, illegal detention, extrajudicial and arbitrary killings, forceful crackdown on peaceful protesters and mass burial.
He attributed the situation to those he described as unrestrained agents of the state, as detailed in the 2017/2018 Amnesty International Human Rights Report.
He said there had been concerted efforts by the government to gag the media leading to the manhandling of journalists and invasion of media houses over reports considered unfavourable.
He further alleged that the Presidency attempted to inject crisis into the electoral process with the delay in the presentation of the Independent National Electoral Commission’s election budget and the President’s refusal to sign the amendments to the Electoral Act.
Ologbondiyan said, “This is in addition to the widely condemned foisting of Mrs Amina Zakari, President Buhari’s relation by marriage, as head of the collation of results of the presidential poll, as well as plot to use the police as a suppressive tool to intimidate voters and assist APC agents to unleash violence and manipulate the process.
“This administration has turned out to be the most vicious in the history of our nation. Nigerians and the world must therefore rise in condemnation of this dangerous drift towards Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, Idi Amin’s Uganda, Charles Taylor’s Liberia and Than Shwe’s Burma.
“Perhaps, President Buhari has forgotten that Nigeria is a democratic state and needs to be reminded that as a people, we have chosen democracy as a form of government with the personal freedom, liberty and rule of law that it guarantees. Nigerians will never accept any kind of draconian rule and dictatorial tendencies.”
Ologbondiyan therefore called on Nigerians who he described as victims of the present administration to be ready to vote out the President in order to save the country from fascism.
He said Nigerians were already aware that the ruling All Progressives Congress and the Presidency were not serious with campaigns ahead of the presidential election.
He claimed that the plan was to enmesh the electoral process in crisis and pave the way for rigging.
The party’s spokesman also condemned the current ordeal of the Chief Justice of the Nigeria, Justice Walter Onnoghen.
He described the February presidential election as a referendum on the freedom of Nigerians.
“We make a clarion call on Nigerians to vote in defence of our nation.
“We must vote in defence of our rights and lives as free citizens; we must vote in defence of the rule of law and resistance of repressive forces and political bandit seeking to foist a fascist regime on our nation,” he said. – Punch
– Jan. 16, 2019 @ 18:59 GMT |
Tags: 2019: PDP urges Nigerians to liberate themselves from fascism
