Don’t muzzle legislature, Secondus warns Buhari, APC
Tunde Opalana, Abuja
National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Prince Uche Secondus has warned President Muhammadu Buhari and his All Progressives Congress (APC) against muzzling the legislature and the other arms of government.
Prince Secondus speaking against the backdrop of the obvious direct involvement of the Presidency and his party in today’s election of principal officers of the 9th National Assembly said that the doctrine of separation of power must be respected to avoid dictatorship.
The PDOP national chairman said in a statement from his media office signed by Ike Abonyi, that his warning has become absolutely germane given the dictatorial tendencies of the APC administration as seen in the last four years, and their continuous propensity to disregard the rule of law and other principles of democracy.
According to him, available intelligence shows that the Presidency and the APC have concluded plans to use intimidation and coercion against legislators not ready to do their bidding in their desperation to hoist a leadership on the legislators.
Prince Secondus revealed that the Presidency and the APC have been arm-twisting technocrats in the National Assembly to fashion out favourable rules that would enable them have their way.
He said that the apparent disregard for the basic principle of separation of power by this regime points clearly to their eventual destination which is dictatorship, asserting that the executive is trying to take over the 9th Assembly so as to realize their long held aspiration of hijacking the legislature which began in August last year during the state sponsored stealing of the Senate mace and the aborted illegal seizure of the 8thAssembly.
“Indications are clearly showing that full blown dictatorship is brewing in our country. When a supposed democratic government brazenly muscles all the other arms of government, the legislature, the judiciary and even the press, the fourth estate of the realm, we should be worried at what is loading in our polity,” he averred.
Prince Secondus said that any government not disposed to respecting the separation of power and rule of law as enshrined in the constitution in a democratic setting, is looking for absolute authority which is nothing, but totalitarianism.
Therefore, he admonished the 9th National Assembly members to guide their independence jealously and refuse to be intimidated, knowing that as elected representatives of the people, that they the parliamentarians are the ‘opium’ of democracy.
