The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has knocked the presidency for underestimating the rising cases of killings in the country, adding that President Muhammadu Buhari should be held responsible for bringing bandits into the country as mercenaries during the general elections.
The PDP was reacting to claims by the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, that the number of people killed under Buhari’s watch was lower when compared with Nigerians that lost their lives under the past governments.
He added that the abduction of the District Head of Daura, Alhaji Musa Uba, who is also the husband to President Buhari’s niece, Hajiya Bilki, showed that security agencies were not giving any town preferential treatment.
But in its reaction, the PDP, through its National Publicity Secretary of the PDP, Mr Kola Ologbodiyan, said “It is an insult that kidnappers could be that daring to the extent of going a few metres to his (Buhari’s) house and take away his district head.
“That is a worse form of insult to the President of a country like Nigeria. To us, nothing compares to that insult.
“This was one of the many reasons we asked him to abandon whatever he was doing in London and return home. If he had been asked how Nigeria was while he was there, what would have been his response?
“Now is the time for him to show that he still has energy, if he actually has, to work.
“We know that there were no bandits in this country, especially in the North-West before the elections. But they were the ones that brought mercenaries from other countries to this country for the elections.
“The President should, therefore, wake up and act as a leader, who is leading a nation of more than 200 millon people.”
The president’s spokesman, commenting on a report by the acting Inspector-General of Police, Mohammed Adamu’s, which claims that 1,071 persons lost their lives in crime-related cases across the country in the first quarter of 2019, said despite the recent rising killings, banditry and kidnapping, the figure was still better than that of the previous administrations.
Reacting to this, Ologbondiyan said, “We are not interested in the number of deaths then and now because we are not morticians; we do not work at mortuaries. What we want is peace and a stop to the senseless killings in the country.
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“The President came with a promise to change things positively. He did not promise that he would be taking the number of people killed in his administration and then compare the figure with other administrations when he is done.
“However, one thing is sure: we were not witnessing these daily killings, kidnappings, weeping, gnashing of teeth and sorrow during the administration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, the late Umaru Yar’Adua and President Goodluck Jonathan. They were never a gang of failures.
‘If the President is tired as we could see now, he is free to throw in the towel.”