Presidency Hits Back At Secondus For Petitioning UN Over Rights Violations

The Presidency on Monday took a swipe at the National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party, Uche Secondus, for writing a petition to the United Nations Secretary General accusing President Muhammadu Buhari of human rights violation.

The Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, in a statement said Secondus’ petition confirmed the opposition party “as a bad loser, desperate for another chance after they were kicked out for failing the nation and its people.”

Shehu said it was funny for the PDP to accuse the Federal Government of destroying Nigeria’s democracy in a petition he described as no less preposterous and comical.

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

“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.

“The war against corruption, for which many more politicians may soon be in the dock, 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 ongoing investigations should be assured that it is only a matter of time before the law catches up with them, and makes 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.”

Shehu said if members of the public were privy to some of the facts and figures on corruption that 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.”

On the allegation that the President is behind the spate of herdsmen and farmer clashes in the Middle Belt of Nigeria, Shehu said it was an embarrassing charge that the PDP would make conveying an allegation from the beer parlours of Nigeria to an international body like the UN.

“The PDP certainly has no shred of evidence to make such an allegation.  These are comments driven by tribalism and that age-old trick of balkanisation in a bid to score political points.

“This should not surprise anyone given the politics of anger, violence, and polarisation that are the stock-in-trade of the PDP.