The All Progressives Congress (APC) yesterday condemned the thinly-veiled attempt by the Directorate of Security Service (DSS) to link it with the Boko Haram sect without providing a shred of evidence to support its allegation.
The APC, therefore, demanded that the DSS spokesperson, Marilyn Ogar, to resign or be fired.
The National Publicity Secretary of the party, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, said in a statement yesterday in Ilorin, the Kwara State capital that his party has also decided to sue Ms. Ogar for attempting to blame the APC for the spate of bomb blasts in the country.
The move is to enable her present whatever evidence she may have of the party’s alleged complicity in a court of law.
The APC said the DSS “threw caution to the wind and exhibited its crass partisanship when the agency’s spokesperson, Ogar, said on national television that anytime the APC wins an election, there is no bomb blast, but that whenever other parties win, there is always a bomb blast.
“That this incredulous accusation could be made by the spokesperson of a security agency, without providing a scintilla of evidence to support such claim, has confirmed our fears that the nation’s security agencies have now constituted themselves into the enforcement arm of the PDP”, APC said.
The statement continued: “For the DSS spokesperson to echo the same capricious statement that has been made in the past by the spokesman of the PDP shows that the agency has dropped its toga of non-partisanship and has descended into the political fray. If the DSS has any professional ethics, if DSS is not an arm of the PDP, then the agency must publicly dissociate itself from the irresponsible and unfounded allegation by Ogar and disengage her from the service.
“Doing that will be the first step in restoring the credibility, or whatever is left of it, of the DSS. In the alternative, we challenge the DSS to present to Nigerians any evidence it may have linking our party to the spate of bomb blasts in the country. After all, it is trite that he who alleges must prove”.
The party said since it won the election in Osun, Ogar has been struggling hard to discredit it and its victory, including making a spurious allegation that the party offered N14 million to DSS operatives as a bribe and also trying to make a joke of the arrest of the party’s spokesman, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, for no other reason than that he belongs to the opposition.
The APC said: “Institutions of state like the DSS must know that their responsibility is to the nation, not to any political party that may be having a transient hold on power that their loyalty is to the nation, not to any individual. This way, the institutions will keep their integrity intact and also serve the nation properly.
“Irrespective of the government in power, institutions of state must stay above the fray, in line with best practices”.
Lai has no other work so we don’t care.