*Says Feb. 16 poll referendum for freedom
By Henry Omunu, Abuja
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on Tuesday accused the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Buhari administration of pushing the nation into a fascist state.
The PDP charged Nigerians to use the February 16, 2019 presidential election to save the country from sliding into fascism under the Buhari Presidency and the APC.
Director, Media and Publicity of the PDP Presidential Campaign Organization, Kola Ologbondiyan, who gave the admonition therefore, appealed to the electorate to see the February presidential election as a referendum to regain and defend their freedom.
Ologbondiyan said Nigerians must vote to defend the nation, citizens’ rights, survival of the rule of law and resistance of repressive forces, including rejecting those he termed as ‘political bandits’ seeking to foist a fascist regime on the nation.
He berated the APC and the Buhari Presidency for being unserious with campaigns ahead of the presidential elections because they are relying
on ways to enmesh the election in crisis, stalemate the electoral process and pave the way for rigging and actualization of plots to perpetuate Buhari in office.
According to the PDP, the prevailing state of the polity is a clear manifestation that Nigeria is on a rapid descent into fascism, which we must be resist at the polls, insisting that any vote for APC is an endorsement of fascism.
“Allowing President Buhari another tenure will be a pathway to full totalitarianism, where citizens would be treated as vassals in a conquered territory.
“Today, our freedom and personal liberty as a people are under threat.
Our rights as constitutionally guaranteed as citizens are about to be completely taken away. Our last lines of defence as a free people; our legislature and our judiciary are also under siege,” the party stated.
The PDP said that in spite of widespread condemnation of the unrelenting assault on the judiciary and the courts by the Buhari Presidency and the APC, they have refused to show remorse, by carrying on as if Nigerians are already a conquered people.
Ologbondiyan described the attempt to replace Justice Walter Onnoghen with a pliable chief justice as part of the plot to annex the judiciary to curtail the freedom of expression and to silence opposition members ahead of the February election.
Such attempt at annexations, he stated, is to subject judicial officers under the control of the attorney general of the federation to determine and even write judgments on political and human rights cases as well as cover atrocities of anti-democratic forces.
The PDP spokesman listed sting operation by the Directorate of State Services (DSS) against Supreme Court and High Court judges, the invasion of the Senate by thugs and the sealing of the National Assembly by hooded security agents, torture, illegal detention, extra-judicial and arbitrary killings, forceful crackdown on peaceful protesters and mass burial by unrestrained agents of the state as clear indication of the slide into fascism.
Similarly, he added that there have been concerted efforts by the government to gag the media, inject crisis into the electoral process by delaying the budget presentation of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and Buhari’s declining assent to amendments to the Electoral Act and the foisting of Mrs. Amina Zakari, Buhari’s relation by marriage, as head of the collation of results of the presidential poll as further signs of the administration’s anti-democratic plans.
“This administration has turned out to be the most vicious in the history of our nation. Perhaps, Buhari has forgotten that Nigeria is a democratic state and needs to be reminded that as a people, we have chosen democracy as a form of government with the personal freedom, liberty and rule of law that it guarantees.
“Nigerians will never accept any kind of draconian rule and dictatorial tendencies.
We therefore charge all Nigerians; victims of injustice and brutality of the Buhari Presidency, victims of the mindless killings and all lovers of democracy to get ready to defend our nation and save her from fascism by voting out President Buhari on February 16, 2019,” Ologbondiyan pleaded.
