Threat To Peace: PDP urges National Peace Committee to call Buhari to order

The call is contained in a statement sent to Pulse by the PDP Presidential Campaign Organization (PPCO) spokesman, Kola Ologbondiyan.

The party also said that there is no guarantee of a free and fair election with Amina Zakari at the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

Zakari was recently appointed as the head of INEC’s collation centre committee.

PDP immediately called for her sack, alleging that she is a blood relation of the President.

PPCO, in its statement, said that Buhari’s insistence of having his relation lead team collating election results is provocative and might lead to the truncating of the whole election process.

Read the full statement below:

Gentlemen of the press, the PDP Presidential Campaign Organization (PPCO) alerts the National Peace Committee, the United Nations and all world leaders to save our nation from imminent collapse by immediately calling President Muhammadu Buhari to order, if we must have peaceful, free, fair and credible general elections in February.

We want the whole world to know that Nigeria is in a perilous time. President Muhammadu Buhari’s desperation for self-succession has become the major threat to our national unity, stability and peaceful electoral process.

Having realized that Nigerians are rallying behind our candidate, Atiku Abubakar, as their next President, the Buhari Presidency is now seeking ways to enmesh the electoral process in crisis.

The Buhari Presidency has been overheating the polity with its unending manipulations of INEC, muzzling of free speech and escalated clampdown on opposition and Civil Society Organizations and we insist that such must stop if we must have a peaceful election.

No free and fair election with Amina Zakari in INEC

The PPCO insists that there is no way peace can be guaranteed without a free and fair election. Already, Nigerians across the board are livid with anger over the foisting of Mrs. Amina Zakari, President Buhari’s relation, to head the collation of Presidential election results.

President Buhari’s insistence on having his relation in charge of collation of Presidential election results is completely provocative, a direct affront to the sensibilities of Nigerians and express invitation to crisis of epic proportion, which is capable of truncating the entire electoral process and derailing our hard-earned democracy.

The world is aware that majority of Nigerians have rejected Mrs. Amina Zakari. Over 90 percent of the political parties in the election, as well as major political and socio-cultural groups across the country have also called for her resignation from INEC, yet President Buhari is insisting on her stay in the commission.

Our party is aware of plots by the Buhari Presidency to use Amina Zakari, who has been mentioned as part of those involved in the rigging oft 2018 governorship elections in Ekiti and Osun states, to plunge the 2019 general elections into controversies, truncate the flow of results and even render elections in some critical states inconclusive, to pave way for allocation of fictitious votes to President Buhari and the APC.

We want the National Peace Committee and the entire world to know that as long as Amina Zakari is in INEC, a peaceful election is not guaranteed because she has the mandate to abuse the process and this will not be accepted by Nigerians.

The PPCO therefore calls on the National Peace Committee to immediately speak out on the impropriety of having Amina Zakari in INEC as well as insist on her removal so that we can have a credible and peaceful Presidential election.

No peaceful elections with citizens under siege

Furthermore the PPCO notes that peaceful election cannot be guaranteed as long as the Buhari Presidency continues to besiege, harass, intimidate, unleash violence and provocative acts of totalitarianism against opposition figures and persons perceived to be against President Buhari’s self-succession bid.

The PPCO alerts the entire world and particularly the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) of the ongoing use of the Police to clamp down on opposition figures, particularly members of the PDP Presidential Campaign Council and outspoken CSOs on trumped-up criminal charges.

Part of the plot is to charge such individuals before certain compromised judicial officers, in various states, who have been briefed to detain, silence and put such opposition figures and CSO members out of circulation until after elections are concluded.

Particular cases at hand are those of our Presidential Campaign Director on Civil Societies, Senator Dino Melaye, who is being hounded for his outspokenness against the misrule of the Buhari Presidency, as well as Civil Rights activist, Deji Adeyanju, who is widely believed to have been held down in prison because of his scathing criticism against the violations of the rights of Nigerians by the Buhari Presidency.

The PPCO recalls that Senator Dino Melaye had earlier alerted of plots by the Police to arrest and poison him. His present ordeal as well as those of the civil rights activist, Deji Adeyanju, in the hands of the Buhari-led authorities, is incendiary in an election year and we insist that no harm must come to them or any member of the opposition or CSOs, before, during and after the elections.

The PPCO is aware that the aim is to use the state apparatus of power to attempt to instill fear in Nigerians, stifle free speech, cow opposition and CSOs to silence so as to pave for President Buhari’s self-succession.

This is a clear attempt to return our nation to the nightmares of the 1984 when draconian leaders forcefully subjugated innocent Nigerians under the grips of military Decree 2 and we urge the CJN to save our nation by insulating the judiciary from this ignoble scheme.

However, the PPCO wants the Buhari Presidency to note that it is preposterous for anybody, no matter how highly placed, to think that our great party, the PDP and our Presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, who enjoys the support of overwhelming majority of Nigerians, can be subdued out of the political space in our country.

Our heroes past fought against colonialism and won. Our modern heroes fought the military and gained today’s democracy for our nation so that every Nigerian can enjoy freedoms and rights as guaranteed in the 1999 Constitution (as amended). Nigerians are therefore not ready to surrender these freedoms and rights to neo-totalitarianism or allow anybody to suppress them in their own land.

We therefore counsel President Buhari to tame his desperation for power. Our nation has had many Presidents before President Buhari and there will be many more after him.

President Buhari will not be the first President to be defeated in an election as such he should not set our nation on fire just because he is feeling the air of rejection due to his incompetence and the gale of corruption in his administration.

Our party is courageously going into the general elections with the support of overwhelming majority of Nigerians and they are not ready to accept any result that does not reflect their already expressed wishes and aspirations.

Amina Zakari, in an interview with BBC News Yoruba, has dismissed the allegations, saying that she is not related to President Buhari.