PDP calls Buhari ‘insensitive leader’ over comment on illegal migrants

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has criticised President Muhammadu Buhari’s comment on illegal migrants. 

While playing host to German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday, Buhari said migrants who take the risk of going through the Sahara and the Mediterranean Sea are on their own.

“We have made it very clear that we do not support anything illegal and anybody who feels this country does not offer him what he should to be offered as a citizen and decide to defy the desert and the Mediterranean is doing it at his own risk,” the president had said.

Reacting in a statement on Saturday, Kola Ologbondiyan, PDP publicity secretary, said rather than making such an “incendiary statement,” Buhari should find a solution to the underlying causes of illegal migration.

“The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) says President Muhammadu Buhari’s statement to German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, that Nigerians caught up in their attempt to illegally enter Europe, are on their own, further exposes him as an insensitive leader, who cares less about the plights of his compatriots,” the statement read. 

“While the PDP does not, in any way, support illegal migrations, our party holds that such does not warrant incendiary statement against our citizens by no less a person than the President, who should be seeking for ways to solve the problem.”

The opposition party blamed the Buhari-led government for the increase in illegal migration in recent years, further questioning the president’s right to seek re-election in 2019. 

“Is it not disturbing to Mr President that reports by Nigerian Immigration Services showed that many more Nigerians have been trapped in detention and slave camps in various parts of the world,” the statement continued. 

“It has, therefore, become clearer that there is no way our nation can survive another four years under a leadership such as the Buhari-led APC administration, hence the determination by Nigerians to rally on the platform of the repositioned PDP to throw up a competent President to effectively pilot the affairs of our nation, come 2019.”