AHEAD of the 2019 general elections, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on Tuesday cautioned the police and other security agencies not to allow themselves to be used by the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) as instruments of persecution against Nigerians perceived to be unsupportive of the unpopular re-election bid of President Muhammodu Buhari.
This is just as the party declared that it believed that the reported moves to arrest the media adviser to the former military President, General Ibrahim Babangida, Mr Kassim Afegbua over a statement he issued on behalf of his Principal in which said that President Muhammadu Buhari should not be voted to continue in office by 2019, was a ploy to set the table for a vicious muzzling of constitutionally guaranteed free speech and right to an opinion of citizens in the country.
The position of the Party was contained in a statement made available to newsmen in Abuja yesterday by its National Publicity Secretary, Hon Kola Ologbondiyan.
The main opposition Party lamented that recent distasteful events including unwarranted harassment of perceived opponents of the APC, supposed and actual presidential hopefuls as well as opposition members, showed that the APC had now gone into a jittery mode, having realized that its chances of winning 2019 the general election had already vanished.
It described the trend as a dangerous threat to the nation’s democracy and symptomatic of a failed party that iwas prepared to turn against the citizens in a desperate bid to hang on to power against the will of the people.
According to the Party, “we now have a terrifying situation where people are harassed for daring to aspire for certain elective offices or even express opinion regarding governance in the country.
“Nigerians and the international community have seen that almost all those who have openly expressed, or perceived to be nursing ambition for certain offices, including the presidency, are now facing one trumped up
charge or the other ostensibly meant to cow and discredit them.
“The point is that the APC has refused to wake up to the reality of the fact that Nigerians have already reached a consensus rejecting them and that no amount of threats, intimidation and persecution with state apparatus of power can subjugate or make them change that determined resolve to vote out APC and its candidates come 2019”.
The, therefore, called on all well-meaning Nigerians to caution the APC in the interest of the growing democracy in the country.
It stated that the fact that the APC was leaving office in 2019 had become inevitable and no one should be part of their desperation to completely ruin the country before their exit.
