Kano APC rally: PDP demands investigation into presence of mercenaries

…Southern, Middle Belt leaders condemn participation of Govs from Niger Republic

Tunde Opalana, Abuja

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has demanded an investigation into an alarm it raised on an allegation levelled against the Muhammadu Buhari Presidency and the All Progressives Congress (APC) over smuggling of people from the Niger Republic to increase the crowd of supporters in Kano. The PDP lamented the presence of a crowd of aliens from Niger Republic to populate the rally in Kano State, on Thursday. The party berated President Buhari and the APC, who were said to have been on their desperation for compromised Nigeria’s territorial integrity as a nation which portends grave danger to national security and the sanctity of the electoral process. The party spokesperson, Kola Ologbondiyan, in a statement was bitter that Nigeria as a nation contending with insurgency and banditry, the involvement of mercenaries must condemned, sos also importation of persons from neighbouring countries by the APC. He said: “This is particularly against the backdrop of claims by President Buhari that killer herdsmen ravaging our nation are mercenaries who are infiltrating from the Sahel region”. “Nigerians can now see the unfolding of the plots by agents the APC to use mercenaries from neighboring countries to precipitate crisis with the aim of scuttling the 2019 general election, having realized that they cannot win in a free, fair and credible election. “Now we understand the weight of the submission by the National Security Adviser (NSA) Maj. Gen. Babagana Mongunu (rtd), when he stated recently that “unscrupulous elements are already mobilising merchants of violence, including armed bandits and terrorists to orchestrate violence during the elections in several states of the federation”. Speaking further, Ologbondiyan said: “Today, Nigerians need no further evidence of those planning evil against our nation. “Already, there apprehensions that miscreants who came from Niger Republic to President Buhari’s rally are being offered accommodation in our country by the APC to unleash violence immediately it is clear that President Buhari is losing in the February 16 presidential election. “On account of these, PDP demands an urgent and thorough investigation into the circumstances leading to the presence of politicians and thugs from Niger Republic at the APC presidential rally in Kano on Thursday. “The APC and the Buhari Presidency must immediately explain the roles being played by Issa Moussa, Governor of Zinder and his counterpart from Maradi, Zakiri Umar both of the Niger Republic, who were sighted decked in the attires and official logos of the APC, in our political affairs. “Our security agencies must immediately investigate and lay in the public domain the circumstances leading to their presence, which more or less confirms that the APC has lost all domestic credibility and has assumed a desperate mode. “The presence of the Niger Republic Governors at President Buhari’s rally signposts a direct assault on the credibility of the Presidential elections. This is particularly against the backdrop of INEC’s plans to allow Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in that country to vote in our election, a situation that opens the way for aliens to infiltrate as IDPs and participate in our elections. “Our apprehensions are accentuated by INEC’s recent mass creation of additional polling units which have not been properly designated and which may be deployed for the perpetuation of monumental electoral fraud. We note how Kano State, in 2015, delivered 1.9 million votes to the APC presidential candidate in circumstances devoid of transparency and credibility”. The party said the promise by Governor Abdullahi Ganduje of Kano State to deliver five million votes to Presidential Buhari in the 2019 election is predicated on the unfettered opening of our international borders to foreign political interests. Further probing the presence of politicians from Niger Republic, he said: “What was the true purpose of the invitation of these foreigners to the APC rally in Kano on Thursday? What secret deals did APC leaders make with them at the expense of our national security? “It begs the question how a Government that vilified credible international bodies that genuinely advised on the need for a free and fair election, as interfering in our elections, would now be spending public resources rent political mercenaries from neighbouring countries. “We know that APC’s jettisoning of our territorial integrity and national security to hire crowds from Niger Republic is borne out of frustration over the recent successes and massive turn out of supporters at PDP rallies held in the North West”. The party said that the spontaneous and mammoth turnouts of supporters and admirers of the PDP as well as the people’s candidate, Atiku Abubakar, even in the APC’s supposed strongholds in the North West states of Kaduna, Jigawa, Katsina, Sokoto, Zamfara, Kebbi and Kano, has no doubt, discomfited the APC and its Presidential candidate. The PDP held that the 2019 general election is only for Nigerians, adding that there is no way Nigerian citizens will allow foreigners to participate in the electoral process. “We therefore call on all Nigerians irrespective of creed, ethnicity and political affiliations to rise in total condemnation of this direct assault on our territorial integrity as a nation. “Our citizens must henceforth be at alert and get prepared to defend the sovereignty of our nation, which President Buhari and the APC, in their desperation, are ready to trade away”, he said. Meanwhile, leaders of Southern and Middle Belt ethnic nationalities under the aegis of the Southern and Middle Belt Leaders Forum, SMBLF, has condemned the participation of two serving governors from the Republic of Niger, at the presidential rally of the All Progressives Congress, APC, in Kano. Recall that Issa Moussa and Zakiri Umar, governors of Zinder and Maradi regions, respectively, were sighted in Kano, fully attired in the garments and colours of the APC and taking photographs with President Muhammadu Buhari in Kano on Thursday. The leaders of thoughts were alarmed that the presence of those governors and others from the neighbouring country at the invitation of the Kano State governor, Abdullahi Ganduje, undermines National security. In a statement signed by representatives of the ethnic leaders – Yinka Odumakin for South West, Prof. Chigozie Ogbu for South East, Senator Bassey Henshaw for South South, and Dr. Isuwa Doguwa for Middle Belt, they said “this singular action validates the wholesale desperation of the APC to deploy every untoward scheme to impugn the integrity of the forthcoming election, in a macabre reenactment of some evil aspects of the 2015 election”. They added that “this is an affront to our national sovereignty and a gross abuse of diplomatic relations”. The leaders knocked the Buhari’s administration which recently lampooned Western diplomatic powers and bodies for criticizing the unconstitutional purported suspension of the Chief Justice of the Federation, Justice Walter Nkanu Onnoghen from office, this is the height of duplicity and doublespeak. “Never in our political history has our national security been so endangered in the name of politics and politicking, a situation which calls for immediate investigation by relevant security agencies. The National Intelligence Agency, NIA; the Defence Intelligence Agency, DIA and the Department of State Services, DSS, must move to interrogate this development and report their findings to us Nigerians whose best interests they swore to serve. “In a country which has been in the vice grip of accentuated terrorism, herdsmen killings, banditry and kidnapping in parts of the country especially since the advent of the Buhari administration, the kind of unholy philandering between Buhari and foreign interests from regional neighbours suspected of complicity in our internal security challenges, calls for introspection and inquest. “Only last year, President Buhari prioritized the construction of a rail line from Kano to Maradi in Niger, at a time several aspects of our national infrastructure were and are still begging for attention. Maradi, the third largest city in Niger Republic and Zinder, are two prefectures in the country which are predominantly populated by Fulanis with consanguineal relationship with Daura emirate, Buhari’s birthplace. ” As military head of state in 1985, Buhari purportedly favoured Ide Oumarou, a diplomat from Niger, over and above Nigeria’s own Peter Onu, in the race for the position of Secretary-General of the African Union, AU, to underscore his consanguineous relationship and sentiments with and for the Nigerien Oumarou. “We recall that during the 2015 general elections, there were reports of thousands of people, many of whom were under-aged voters, crossing from Niger Republic, into Kano through our extremely porous borders to vote in Nigeria’s elections for a particular candidate. Unfortunately, the illegality was acquiesced to by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC. “In recent weeks, there have been recent reports of seamless human movements between our national neighbours, notably Chad and Niger, into parts of Nigeria of people in open top vehicles, to different parts of the country”, said the Forum. The SMBLF called for increased vigilance amongst all Nigerians, as the nation approaches the critical last two weeks to the presidential election and drew the attention of the international community to the impairment of Nigeria’s territorial integrity and fragile national security, by the uncanny desperation of the Buhari-led APC to undermine the electoral process, even at the risk of exacerbating our already simmering political situation. “Nigerians must collectively resist any plot to further imperil and destabilize the polity in a desperate bid by some to win the forthcoming election at all costs and by all means possible”, they insisted.