Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, has risen against political leaders in Nigeria and their supporting groups who are inciting people, threatening violence and engaging in hate speeches. He wants such leaders to be dumped at the polls.
While speaking at his campaign rally in Dull, Tafawa Balewa Local Government Area of Bauchi State, Dogara noted that Northern Nigeria was facing ‘’existential threat as a result of unprecedented level of violence and killings’’ and accordingly called on the people to resist attempts by those he described as ‘’wicked, unpatriotic and divisive people’’ to incite them against one another.
The speaker was speaking as his party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was counseling Governor Nasir el-Rufai of Kaduna State, to channel his alleged frustration to President Muhammadu Buhari, whom he aptly described as an incompetent, old fashioned, corrupt, insensitive, parochial and tyrannical leader, who should not be voted into office, instead of seeking to incite violence in the country.
Governor el-Rufai has been threatening that members of global democratic institutions working towards peaceful 2019 general elections in the country will return in body bags.
PDP National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, says the threat has raised new questions regarding those behind the killing of expatriates and aid workers in various troubled parts of the country.
According to the PDP spokesman, ‘’it is quite revealing that el-Rufai, who exposed Gen. Buhari in 2010 as unelectable is now prancing about in defence of Buhari’s incompetent and anti-democratic administration, to the extent of issuing death threats to others, just to secure his place under a dictatorial administration.
‘’Governor el-Rufai had in 2010 described Buhari as ill- equipped for modern day governance. He berated Buhari of lacking capacity to comprehend current trends, to the extent that he would think that a blackberry was a fruit. In his reply to Buhari’s response to his earlier criticisms,
el-Rufai stated: Mallam El-Rufai wishes to remind General Buhari that he has remained perpetually unelectable because his record as military head of state, and afterwards, is a warning that many Nigerians have wisely heeded. His insensitivity to Nigeria’s diversity and his parochial focus are already well-known.
In 1984, Buhari allowed 53 suitcases belonging to his ADC’s father to enter Nigeria unchecked at a time the country was exchanging old currency for new…..Buhari was so high- handed that he gave himself and his officials immunity even from truthful reporting. That obnoxious Decree 4, against which truth was no defence, was used to jail journalists and attempt to cow the media as a whole. That tyrannical legislation shows the essence of his intolerance. These are facts of recent history. The story of counter-trade and import licensing, the cornerstone of Buhari’s stone-age economic strategy and those whose interests it served, is a tale for another day.
‘’Today, President Buhari’s inept and colossally corrupt administration has wrecked our once robust economy, divided our nation, instituted executive high-handedness, violation of human rights, incessant breach of our constitution, disobedience of court order, assaults on our democratic institutions, clamp down of the media and dissenting voices, a scenario that has brought so much pain and anguish for Nigerians.
‘’Governor el-Rufai’s venom should therefore be directed towards President Buhari, who has brought so much pain to Nigerians and of course himself, for his own insensitivity to Nigerians and his support for anti-democratic tendencies of the Buhari administration.’’
On his part, while declaring that‘’it is time for Nigerians to use the 2019 general elections to stamp out killings, kidnapping, armed banditry and other sundry crimes that have engulfed the country, especially the North, Dogara also expressed gratitude to his constituents for their patience and sacrifice in electing him for three consecutive terms which enabled him to be elected as the speaker and pledged to ensure the completion of all projects in the constituency when they re-elect him.
He informed the mammoth crowd of supporters how he attracted road projects worth over N46 billion to the State, which he said would have taken the Bauchi State government decades to execute even as he berated his state Governor, Mohammed Abdullahi Abubakar, for using the state’s resources to sponsor protests against him in Bauchi, Abuja and Lagos.
‘’They said we did budget padding and even Bauchi State government sponsored protests against me but now that they have seen the projects they say it is Buhari’s project. So, was it Buhari who did the padding which they sponsored protests against him?’’ he queried, arguing that his people have benefitted immensely from the PDP, and reminded them of how he facilitated the construction of 78km Bauchi-Tafawa Balewa road worth N9.6 billion during the PDP administration.
Also speaking, Senator Adamu Gumba and Hon Ahmed Yerima urged the people to reject moves by the All Progressives Congress (APC) government to use religion to divide them ahead of the elections.
‘’Because they’ve nothing to show as their achievement, they now want to use religion but they won’t succeed, our people are wise. They should come out openly and do it. Why are they moving under the cover of darkness? They have been exposed already and the agenda they came with has failed woefully’’, Senator Gumba said.
For Yerima, ‘’you should not be deceived, APC wants to stop the unprecedented developments you are witnessing in this constituency and Bauchi State’’.
Dogara had two weeks ago, raised an alarm on how the Bauchi State Government and the ruling APC were arming thugs with assault rifles ahead of next week’s presidential and National Assembly elections.
