The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has condemned what it described as a looming danger, imminent violence and breakdown of law and order caused by The Presidency and the All Progressives Congress (APC) to forcefully take over control of Akwa Ibom and other littoral states.
In a press conference by the party addressed by the national publicity secretary, Mr Kola Ologbondiyan, it observed that President Muhammadu Buhari and the APC have continued to design heinous machinations and issuing threats of violence to take over these states, for which they had now diverted their arsenals, particularly on Akwa Ibom State.
He recalled that two weeks ago, the PDP had cautioned The Presidency and the APC on their exposed plot to instigate confusion and violence in Bayelsa State by destabilizing the security apparatus of the state and foisting a siege mentality on the entire oil-rich South-South region.
Ologbondiyan further stressed that Nigerians were all witnesses to voltaic outbursts by the Buhari Campaign Organization and the APC leaders and the use of violent images and outright threats of war on Akwa Ibom State.
The party recalled the violent and ominous outburst by the former governor of Akwa Ibom, Senator Godswill Akpabio, who allegedly vowed that the APC will take over the state the same way Hitler overran Poland, swearing that “War shall see Warsaw and Warsaw shall see war,” in Akwa Ibom.
He noted that given this statement as the policy of the APC and The Presidency against Akwa Ibom and other parts of the nation there were not in control, the president, as chief security officer of the nation, never issued a reprimand nor Senator Akpabio been pulled in for questioning by security agencies.
“It is now clear that the statement is an approved prelude of a pre-meditated plot by President Buhari and the APC to initiate, facilitate and superintend a mayhem and blood-letting in the peaceful and developing Akwa Ibom, irrespective of huge human and material damage such could cause in the state,” he stated.”
He also pointed out that part of the plot was the forceful attempt to take over control of Akwa Ibom State Legislature for which The Presidency and the APC have been sponsoring the invation of the House of Assembly Complex and seeking ways to violently oust the duly elected leadership of the assembly.
Besides, the party said that the leadership of the APC, through the national chairman, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, had threatened and directly accused the erstwhile Akwa Ibom commissioner of police, Mr John Abang, of refusing to carry out APC’s orders to provide security cover that would enable the legislature to effect a change of leadership. Ologbondiyan maintained that the APC hierarchy had succeeded in ordering the redeployment of the Akwa Ibom commissioner of police who has been replaced by a new one, Mr Hyelasinda Kimo, with the former spending just a month in the state.
The PDP observed that the commissioner was removed for not carrying out APC’s atrocious directive, while the new commissioner of police was allegedly mounting tension and escalated siege mentality in Akwa Ibom, particularly in the state legislature where thugs, backed by the police, had been invading the premises, disrupting legislative activities, harassing staff members and hindering them from performing their responsibilities.
He reasoned that the action of the APC and its members was a recourse to self-help against declarative judgment by a competent court of jurisdiction sacking the lawmakers, and a deliberate attempt to instigate violence, foist a reign of terror, cause confusion, create an impression that the state has become ungovernable.
“This is with a view to opening the way for declarations of a state of emergency which will enable them dismantle all democratic structures and forcefully take over control of the state,” he noted.
Henceforth, the party wants The Presidency and the APC to bear in mind that their plot to forcefully take over Akwa Ibom or any other PDP-controlled state would be firmly resisted by the people of those states and such may lead to crisis of unprecedented magnitude that has the capacity of truncating our hard-earned democracy.
This, the party said, was because “the people of Akwa Ibom will never allow anybody, no matter how highly placed, to overrun their state or in any attempt to foist an undemocratic leadership over them, and no amount of intimidation or force will make them change this resolve.”
He therefore charged The Presidency and the APC to be ready to take full responsibility of any breakdown of law and order as direct consequences of the people’s resistance to their plot to forcefully take over control of Akwa Ibom or any of the PDP –controlled states.
Culled from Pioneer Newspaper.
