The newly registered Peoples Democratic Movement (PDM) has condemned in strong terms what it called “the use of state machinery” by President Goodluck Jonathan against members of the opposition.
The party was reacting to a scheduled meeting of G-7 governors and members of the Abubakar Kawu Baraje-led New Peoples Democratic Party, nPDP, in the Sokoto Governors lodge, Asokoro, Abuja, on Sunday night which was aborted by a detachment of armed policemen.
In a press statement issued on his behalf yesterday in Abuja by his media advisor – Alaba Yusuf, the national chairman of the party, Malam Bashir Yusuf Ibrahim described the latest clampdown on dissenting politicians and groups as nothing but “political witch-hunting and shameless display of intolerance.
“President Jonathan should spend his energy fighting the rot inside his party and government. Let him deploy his uncommon zeal in dealing with the opposition to fighting the monumental level of corruption in which his favourite ministers are involved.
“Let him cleanse the ministries of Petroleum, Aviation, Niger Delta and Defense of corruption and stop industrial-scale oil theft in the creeks. Then we will know he is serious about solving Nigeria’s problems. Jonathan should stop chasing shadows and overheating the polity,” he said.
The PDM national chairman further stressed that the intimidation and harassment being dished out to the G-7 governors, the precarious political situation in Rivers and Adamawa States where constituted political structures are daily being undermined or completely usurped, is also unacceptable describing these as acts of wickedness capable of spelling doom for Nigeria’s nascent democracy if not checked.
Mr. Ibrahim explained that the aborted Nigerian Governors’ Forum, NGF, election deemed to have been won by Governor Rotimi Amaechi but unlawfully given to Governor Jonah Jang of Plateau State by the PDP government was “nothing short of fascism by an administration that is not practicing what it preaches.”
He also noted that the “shady and shoddy show of raw and crude exhibition of power of incumbency” constitute a bad omen for a country that just won a seat on the Security Council of the UN adding that no country can truly grow or develop when its government oppresses the citizens and make people to live in abject poverty, fear and insecurity.
“The latest victim of this totalitarianism, Mrs. Aisha Jummai Alhassan, a serving female senator from Taraba State, has her business premises targeted for demolition because she belongs to a faction of PDP opposed to President Jonathan”.
-Daily Trust
