PDP blasts APC, Presidency over Mace snatching
From Nasir Dambatta, in Abuja
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has condemned the invasion of the National Assembly and decried the seizure of the Senate mace, describing it as “a direct assault on the legislature and bold attempt to truncate Nigeria’s democracy.”
A media statement signed by its National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan
noted that “this offensive has been emboldened by series of interferences and direct attacks by the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Buhari Presidency on the institution of the National Assembly, particularly the Senate.
“The APC has foisted on our nation an irredeemable autocracy, which has in three years of governance, gone beyond limits to force Nigerians to accept a government that has no respect for freedom and the ideals of democracy, particularly the constitutional separation of powers.”
The PDP also queried whether it was not not strange that a legislative day appointed to further deliberate on the re-ordering of sequence of election “will be the day that strange elements would invade the National Assembly, particularly, the hallowed chambers of the Senate, to disrupt legislative proceeding and seize the mace?”
The opposition party also found equally strange what it considered “the compromising of security in the National Assembly paving the way for the invasion”
The statement argued that parliament all over the world, is the bastion of democracy, without which government becomes autocratic and totalitarian.
It urged Nigerians to pause and reflect on “the series of assaults on our legislature under the current dispensation; the persecution and harassment of the leaders and members of the Senate on trumped-up charges, including declaring a serving senator wanted by the Police.”
The statement also charged the National Assembly to bring forth every legislative instrument to protect itself from external aggressions as well as unravelling every persons, offices and institutions that played any form of roles in “this wild attempt to scuttle our hard earned democracy.”
The PDP ended it’s reaction thus: “Our nation has accepted democracy as the best form of governance. Those whose adrenaline cannot accommodate democracy and its constitutionally guaranteed tenets should either shape in or be forced to conform with the best ideals of democracy”.
