…… the crusade is in order – APC
…… the anti-graft battle is selective – PDP
President Muhammadu Buhari’s fight against corruption has divided senators from the ruling All Progressives Congress and the opposition, People’s Democratic Party with the former in support while the latter is against the fight.
The PDP Caucus, led by Minority Leader, Godswill Akpabio at a news conference in Abuja, called on President Muhammadu Buhari to urgently intervene in alleged interference of the Department of State Security (DSS) operatives in petitions pending at various Election Petitions Tribunals.
The Caucus, made up of all 49 senators elected on the platform of the PDP, condemned alleged harassment, intimidation and arrest of PDP members in some PDP-controlled states by DSS operatives.
But the Chairman of the Senate ad-Hoc Committee on Information and Publicity, Dino Melaye, dismissed the claims of the opposition, accusing the PDP Caucus of crying wolf where there was none.
Melaye said: “It is surprising and shocking that this is coming from the PDP. We were in this country when we saw the DSS apparently becoming a parastatal of the PDP.”
He urged the PDP to brace for the change that the APC has introduced to governance, saying the era of impunity was gone for good.
Melaye said: “We are coming from an era where you hardly separated the spokesperson of PDP from that of the DSS. Now that President Buhari is trying to change the order, there has been a lot of cry and noise-making. But, I want to assure you that no sinner shall go unpunished.
“If you are not guilty, you have nothing to fear but there is a popular Yoruba saying, when a witch exclaims in the night and in the morning the child dies, you know who killed the child. So, if people who have committed atrocities are now being either investigated or questioned, we should not politicise the issue.
“I am not the spokesman of DSS but I want to say that Nigerians suffered what I will call interference by the DSS in the past and it is too early for anybody to cry foul if an investigation is going on. As I speak to you, the wife of the Senate President is being investigated and there are senators (not of the PDP extraction) who are being investigated.
“So, should we now say that there are PDP agents in APC government? Let everybody carry his cross.”
Akpabio said President Buhari’s immediate intervention in the matter was of essence to prevent what could affect the growth of democracy. He noted that the DSS alleged meddlesomeness was more noticeable in three PDP-controlled states of Rivers, Akwa Ibom and Abia.
Akpabio said: “The PDP caucus is worried, alarmed and shocked by recent developments in our polity where the DSS is now involved in electoral matters.
“A situation where officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in Rivers, Akwa Ibom and Abia states (all PDP states), are daily being arrested, detained and questioned on politically-motivated corruption allegations is worrisome and spells doom for our democracy, unless the trend is reversed.
“No democracy survives without a viable opposition in any part of the world. INEC is supposed to be an independent commission and its officials ought to be shielded from partisanship.
“The arrest of electoral officials in states APC did not win elections in an APC-led Federal Government is a source of worry to this caucus and indeed all lovers of democracy worldwide.
“There is no provision in our laws that allow the DSS to meddle in a partisan manner in the political electoral process. The elections in Akwa Ibom, Rivers and Abia were held and adjudged successful and credible by Prof. Attahiru Jega, the erstwhile Chairman of INEC.
“Equally, dissatisfied and aggrieved parties have gone to courts in conformity with our laws to seek redress.The intrusion by the DSS in arresting, coercing, intimidating, and harassing INEC officials in a democracy is most condemnable.
“Though these arrests, coercion, detention, and harassment are happening in PDP-controlled states, we would still have condemned these actions if they had taken place in APC-controlled states since these actions are strange to democratic ethics and practices all over the world.”