PDP Rejects FG’s Travel Ban On Fifty High Profile Nigerians

The Peoples Democratic Party has rejected the placement of travelling restrictions on 50 high-profile Nigerians.

The News Agency of Nigeria reports that the party gave the rejection in a statement issued by its National Publicity Secretary, Mr Kola Ologbondiyan, on Saturday in Abuja.

Ologbondiyan described the restriction as a ‘draconian step’ clearly targeted at members of the opposition parties, the business community, religious leaders, former political leaders and traditional rulers, perceived to be averse to President Muhammadu Buhari’s re-election bid.

He added that the ‘decree’ was a direct clampdown on the country’s democratic order and an overthrow of rights of the citizenry as guaranteed by the 1999 Constitution (as amended).

“We hope this is not a ploy to harm certain eminent Nigerians on the claims of resisting travel restrictions.

“The whole world can now see how fascism is fast taking over our democracy and judicial system and how the Buhari administration, by fiat, has directly ordered that citizens be secretly trailed.

“Their movements and financial transactions are restricted by government agencies, without recourse to due process of the law,” he said.

Ologbondiyan said that the Presidency had gone into panic mode since the popular emergence of Atiku Abubakar as PDP presidential candidate and the spontaneous jubilation his emergence evoked across the country.

He said that the party maintained that the resort to total clampdown on the opposition and PDP supporters would be totally unacceptable.

“What this means is that all Nigerians, particularly opposition members, members of the business community and religious leaders have become endangered and stand the risk of state violence under the APC administration,” he said.

NAN