Presidency, PDP differ over alleged security checks on Atiku’s aircraft

The Presidency and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) have expressed divergent views over alleged security checks on the aircraft of former Vice President and presidential candidate of the PDP, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, shortly after his arrival from Dubai at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja on Sunday.

The Presidency stated that President Muhammadu Buhari would never issue any directive to search Atiku’s aircraft, challenging those making the allegations to prove with evidence.

But the PDP has alleged that special security squad of army, police and paramilitary agencies physically harassed its Presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, at the Abuja airport, upon his return from Dubai.

The party described as shocking the attackers, in a Gestapo, while acting on ‘orders from above’ rushed Atiku’s plane immediately he landed and attempted to physically manhandle him before invading his aircraft with dangerous weapons to conduct a violent search.

The party’s spokesperson, Kola Ologbodiyan, in a statement made available to newsmen on Sunday said that when the security agencies did not find anything incriminating on Atiku, they allegedly tampered with certain personal documents and gadgets belonging to him, including some of his campaign documents.

He said: “The PDP completely rejects such violence against the person of our Presidential candidate by the Buhari Presidency, which we know has been jittery over Atiku Abubakar’s soaring popularity since his emergence as our candidate.

“We invite the world to note that having failed to drag down our Presidential candidate with spurious allegations and smear campaign, the APC has now resorted to state-backed violence against him and must be held responsible should any harm befall him or any member of his campaign team.

“The PDP is for peace, but we will not accept this recourse to violence, which we believe is orchestrated to directly harm our Presidential candidate,

foist a siege mentality on the system and set the stage for series of coordinated violence, ostensibly to truncate a peaceful conduct of the 2019 general election.

“The Buhari Presidency and the APC should bear in mind that this is an attack on our democracy and the collective sensibility of the overwhelming majority of Nigerians, across board,

who have accepted the choice of Atiku Abubakar as Nigeria’s next President and they will vigorously deploy every means available in a democracy to defend him and our democratic process”.

The PDP claimed that its candidate, today, has the highest demography of supporters and volunteers across the nation and will not hesitate to call them out in defence of democracy if another such attempt is made against our candidate.

“Nigeria is not a conquered territory and anybody that wants to foist a totalitarian regime on our land will be firmly resisted

“We invite President Buhari to recall that as a Presidential candidate, he had occasions to travel out of the country and the government in power never besieged or harassed him in any way. His administration should therefore not introduce such violence in our democratic space”, said the party.

But the Presidency has said that President Buhari cannot descend so low by sending some persons to plant something into the aircraft of the Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Abubakar Atiku, just to implicate him.

A source in the Presidency also urged journalists to find out from the suspected security agencies involved in the alleged secret plot to implicate the former Vice President to explain who sent them, stressing that by the character of President Buhari, he would not involve in such a thing.

The source said: “You should ask all those involved to mention who sent them because the President of Nigeria cannot be dragged into this kind of a thing.”

Atiku had claimed that on arrival from Dubai Sunday morning that he was intimidated and searched by state agents at the Abuja airport.

Atiku on his Twitter handle said: ‘I arrived to Abuja this morning to a search by agents of the state, aimed at intimidating me and my staff.