‘We’ll stop these callous men in their tracks’ — Garba Shehu reacts to PDP’s UN petition

Garba Shehu, presidential spokesman, says the petition the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) sent to the United Nations is beyond comprehension.

In a letter signed by Uche Secondus, PDP national chairman, the party alleged the All Progressives Congress (APC) administration is clamping down on the opposition.

It also accused the federal government of “thoughtless abuse of human rights” and a “predetermined plan by President Muhammadu Buhari to truncate Nigeria’s democracy”.

In a statement, Shehu said the PDP wrote the letter, which he described as “preposterous and comical”,  out of desperation.

He added that the allegation that President Muhammadu Buhari is behind the herdsmen and farmer clashes is “embarrassing”, asking what the president stands to gain from the continuous killings.

“What can President Buhari possibly gain from the killings?” he asked.

“There is no intelligent angle from which you analyse the matter and see any possible gain for this government in the wanton destruction of life and property going on. The various lengths to which President Buhari has gone to end the spate of killings, such as mobilising state resources against the attackers, approving the setting up of new police and army formations in the affected areas, and the recruitment of thousands into the police and other arms of the military, are a few of the several steps taken which a more reasonable opposition will acknowledge.

“For the “new” PDP leadership on the other hand, incapable of thinking big about the nation, they see and treat the unfortunate spate of killing of innocent Nigerians as political gift, about which they seem very happy to cite as the basis for a return to power.

“They feel bad at every turn the country improves, which is beyond comprehension. They should bury their heads in shame.”

Shehu also asked how the lecture of democracy is coming from a party “with intolerance for dissent as its hallmark”.

He asked Secondus not to mislead the UN, saying the anti-corruption war should not be misinterpreted as an attack on human rights.

“PDP’s lecture on democracy and the rule of law, coming from a party with a tradition of undemocratic rule, is a desperate attempt to pervert history and the course of justice,” he said.

“The sermon, is both trite and hollow, coming from a party with intolerance for dissent as its hallmark. A party that humiliated opposition parties and stunted their growth. This was the atmosphere that nurtured the birth of the All Progressives Congress (APC.)

“The war against corruption, for which many more politicians may soon be docked, cannot be misrepresented as an attack on human rights and Mr Secondus should not try to mislead the UN.

“Nigerian politicians at all levels have been used to dispensing with state funds in whatever manner they please, and to have someone, an administration, finally saying, ‘No. It doesn’t matter how big or important you think you are; the law must come against you…’ That is not something they are used to at all. For the PDP, as has now emerged, national security was the major source of their funding.

“The PDP chairman and all other politicians against whom the country’s anti-corruption agencies have on-going investigations should be assured that it is only a matter of time before the law catches up with them, and make them pay for the grief their mismanagement of the past has caused, and is still causing Nigerians. Nigerians suffered because of the poison sowed by the PDP.

“If the public were privy to some of the facts and figures on corruption that President Buhari and the anti-corruption agencies have, they would understand the passion that drives the determination to nail these callous men and stop them in their corrupt tracks.”