The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, has urged
President Muhammadu Buhari to call the State Security Service, SSS, to order,
and to ensure the agency does not harass electoral officials.
The PDP said the new director general of the SSS, Lawal Daura, had been a card carrying member of the All Progressives Congress, APC, and must be cautioned.
The party made the call in a statement Wednesday.
The National Working Committee of the Peoples
Democratic Party at its meeting on Thursday thoroughly considered a number of
very important issues pertaining to the state of affairs in our nation.
The NWC brings to the attention of President
Muhammadu Buhari to some disturbing development in the polity which, if not
nipped in the bud, might significantly affect our democracy and stability as a
nation negatively, and that is the growing and unwarranted intrusion of some
over-zealous security operatives on issues bordering purely on politics.
In particular, the NWC wishes to draw the
attention of the President to the continued intimidation, harassment as well as
the hounding, arrest and detention of Electoral Officers and members of
election tribunals by operatives of the Department of State Services (DSS) in
Rivers, Akwa-Ibom and other PDP states.
The NWC notes that this unfortunate development
has been the case since the appointment of the new Director General of the DSS,
Lawal Musa Daura, whom we learnt was a critical intelligence stakeholder of the
APC as a card-carrying member of that party during the campaigns. This is
ungodly and unacceptable.
We do hope that in his new job, the Director
General of DSS is not mixing issues on the APC presidential candidate and the
President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, hence the need for Mr. President
to rein him in as the development is capable of eroding the cherished
independence of the judiciary and the electoral commission, a sine qua non for
a virile democracy, which guarantees our unity and stability as a nation.
Similarly, we urge Mr. President to take a
critical look at the issue of the appointment of Amina Zakari as Acting
Chairman of INEC for which our party has severally raised some salient issues
why she is not suitable for that position. It is incontrovertible that Mrs.
Zakari by virtue of her blood relationship with Mr. President cannot preside
over the affairs of an Independent National Electoral Commission.
Nigeria belongs to all of us irrespective of
political, religious and ethnic affiliation and as a responsible political
party we shall not fold our hands and watch while our nation drift along
dangerous line.
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