The Action Democratic Party (ADP) expresses shock and disappointment over statement credited to President Muhammadu Buhari giving an order to the security agencies to kill ballot box snatchers during the coming reshuduled elections. It also condemned the obscene use of money by the desperate, inordinate and ambitious Atiku who is criminalizing and compromising both the electoral body and the voters.
That the President gave the shoot at sight directive during the cacaus meeting of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Abuja is unfortunate as it suggests that the security agencies will once again be used to intimidate, harass, manipulate and rig the elections in favour of APC.
Buhari’s declaration on Monday is outrageous and at variance with The Electoral Act which stupulates sanctions for ballot box snatching and at no time did the law said offenders should pay with their lives as President Buhari suggested.
The directive is against the constitutional guarantee of the right to life. The deprivation of life can only be done in accordance with the order of a court of competent jurisdiction or in certain circumstances where legitimate use of force may be applied to protect life and property. Buhari’s directive does not fall within these categories and therefore is an illegal order.
This has proved to the world that we are no longer dealing with PMB who was elected to govern Nigeria under a democratic constitutional rule but a leader, caged by a cabal that is dictatorial and tyrannical with a very dangerous penchant to subvert the law for their parochial and provincial interests. This type of blanket order to kill is appalling and should never come from any civilised leader. We therefore advise President Buhari to withdraw that order and apologize to Nigerians.
We hope that the cabal and their cohorts are not planning to mobilize fake soldiers to shoot innocent Nigerians, snatch ballot boxes and perpetrate their plots to rig having realized that Nigerians have rejected them for the hardship, hunger, poverty and deprivation they unleashed on the people in the last three and half years.
We in ADP condemn this dangerous statement and the brazenly manner by which Atiku is using money to subvert our democracy as we have good intelligence that the cabal intends to use very partisan security agents to cause mayhem in the event that the ruling party begins to fail in the polls. We call on Nigerians and the international community to be alert about these plots to truncate our democracy by the APC government and the PDP desperados.
We also call on Nigerians and the international community to warn both Atiku and President Buhari to desist from their plots and hold them personally responsible if their plans to shortchange the electoral process lead to crisis.
The ADP wish to task Nigerians not to be intimidated by Buhari’s scaremongering and the desperate undemocratic measures of Atiku but to come out in large numbers and vote for the Presidential candidate of the ADP, Engineer Yusuf Yabagi Sani on Saturday, February 23. Sani is equipped with the knowledge, experience, education and integrity to provide the credible alternative government to APC and restore the years the locusts in PDP have eaten.
