From the All Progressives Congress (APC), yesterday, came a stern
warning to the Presidency: Shelve any plan to arrest the Speaker of the
House of Representatives, Rt. Hon. Aminu Tambuwal.
The opposition party said government would be pouring petrol on
naked fire if Tambuwal was arrested. The warning was issued on a day
the National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki, and the police denied
that any move to arrest the Speaker was being contemplated.
Meanwhile, the Presidency washed its hands off the Thursday’s police
invasion of the National Assembly to stop the Speaker and his
colleagues from gaining access into the parliament.
”Published reports have corroborated what we know: That the plan on
Thursday was to prevent Tambuwal from entering the National
Assembly to pave the way for his Deputy, Emeke Ihedioha, who had
already been allowed into the House, to preside over the removal of
the Speaker. Were it not so, why would the police even try to seize the
mace from the Sergeant-at-arms, as reported? Why would the police
detain the Sergeant-at-arms for his refusal? What is the business of
the police with the mace, which is the House’s symbol of
authority?,”the APC said, yesterday, in a statement by its National
Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed.
The statement went on: ”It has also now been corroborated that the
plan hatched by the PDP and the Presidency was to give Tambuwal the
”Ekiti treatment”, in which seven PDP members removed the Speaker in
a 26-member House of Assembly. But for the quick thinking and
action by the honorable members who scaled the gate to access the
assembly, that plan would have succeeded and Tambuwal would have
been removed as Speaker, the consequences of which no one would
have been able to foretell.
”Therefore, instead of pillorying those who scaled the gate, we should
be commending them for risking their lives to save our democracy.
Those who shut the gate against the lawmakers and barred them from
carrying out their constitutional duties are the villains, not the
honorable members who acted in the nation’s interest.”
The opposition party said the “ceaseless hounding of Tambuwal by
President Goodluck Jonathan and the PDP is patently provocative, to
say the least, and calls into question the stated commitment of the
Jonathan administration to the rule of law.”
”In the eyes of the law, Rt. Hon. Tambuwal remains the Speaker of the
House of Representatives, despite his defection from the PDP to the
APC. No matter what the PDP and the Presidency may feel, they are
not the court of law, which is the only body that can make a definite
pronouncement on the fate of the Speaker,” the APC argued.
Tambuwal
”The Speaker also remains the number two man in the hierarchy of the
legislative arm of government, which is distinct from the executive arm
headed by the President. It is therefore not only unconstitutional but
also anti-democratic and anarchic for the PDP-led government of
President Goodluck Jonathan to continue to hound the Speaker and
desecrate the hallowed chambers of the National Assembly, using the
police force that has now become the enforcement arm of the ruling
party, having dropped all pretences to neutrality and professionalism.”
The party said at a time the political atmosphere has become so
charged by the government-backed police assault on the National
Assembly, it is a perilous game to seek to arrest the Speaker, for
whatever reason, unless of course the administration is bent on
deliberately plunging the nation into crisis.
”It is difficult to fathom the reason behind the government’s increasing
resort to recklessness, but it may not be unconnected with the rising
desperation by the ruling PDP to hold on to power at all cost. Perhaps
now that it has started seeing the handwriting on the wall with
Nigerians clamouring for change, this government may be tilting
towards its last option of throwing the nation into crisis to prevent the
2015 elections from holding.
”We are therefore calling on all men and women of good conscience,
especially those who have the ears of the President, to prevail on him
not to push the nation into any worse crisis than it is currently
encountering. With terrorists daily killing and maiming Nigerians,
forcing more than 1.5 million people to flee their homes and
threatening the nation’s territorial integrity, the government’s trifling is
baffling, and should stop forthwith.”
‘Security agents raided APC offices’
The party, also yesterday, alleged that its offices in Lagos were raided
by security agents who, it claimed, destroyed a dozen computers.
The APC condemned the alleged invasion it called “perhaps the worst
political scandal in Nigeria’s history”, and demanded independent
inquiry to fish out those behind it.
Giving details of the invasion, the APC, in another statement, said, in
the early hours of yesterday, a combined team of men of the DSS and
OP-MESA stormed the Bola Ajibola Data Centre belonging to the APC
in the Ikeja area of Lagos and arrested 25 APC data agents and three
security guards.
”In what was a gestapo-like operation, the APC membership data
centre located at Number 10, Bola Ajibola Street, off Allen Avenue,
Ikeja, came under siege between the hours of 5:30 am and 7:30 am on
Saturday. An operation of terror and brigandage was unleashed on a
legitimate operation of a leading national party. They came without a
search warrant for the premises. Over 50 security operatives drafted
from Abuja operations blocked the two major street entrances to the
APC data entry centre, pulled down the gates and spent over 2 hours
ransacking and vandalizing the centre”, the party said.
”More than a dozen computers were destroyed. The server was also
vandalized along with other equipment in the building. Just like the
Watergate Scandal in the USA, the state-sponsored security operatives
apparently acting at the behest of the ruling PDP government, turned
the office upside down, and pulled out and vandalized everything in
sight.
”If the PDP-led government and the security agents had done due
diligence and acted professionally, they would have known that the
APC data centre is a legitimate operation and the staff are Nigerian
youths who were left jobless by the Jonathan government. Apart from
the Lagos centre, the operation is decentralized and similar centres are
functional in about six different locations around the country.
”They chose to believe the lie that it was a warehouse belonging to
one of the national leaders of the party where dangerous weapons
were being kept, when in fact it is a centre for entering the data
provided by the millions of Nigerians who registered as members of
the party during its membership registration exercise.”
It described the invasion as another act of impunity.
APC called the invasion of the offices an attempt to suppress the
opposition, get details of its membership with the intention of using it
to rig the 2015 elections and also to destroy the spirit of democracy.
”When on Oct. 6, 2013, we issued a statement alerting Nigerians that
the Jonathan administration was using Rivers State as a testing
ground for creeping fascism ahead of the 2015 elections, some said
we were raising a false alarm, “the party said.
”Well, here we are. In the past five months, the PDP-led government
has stepped up its acts of impunity and terror against the leaders of
the APC and all non-PDP actors. Elected officers, who are not PDP
members, have had their rights repeatedly violated by the police and
other security operatives. Never before has an elected government
been so scared of the opposition to the point of shutting it down.
”Now that they have overreached themselves by attacking the offices
of the main opposition party and destroying part of its membership
database, can the PDP-led government still claim to be operating under
the rule of law? Can the government sincerely tell the world it is now
ready for free and fair elections in 2015? This is one impunity too
many, and we will not allow it to be swept under the carpet.”
`No arrest order’
“In apparent reference to the arrest move claim, the Office of the NSA,
yesterday, described as unfair and total falsehood “the report in some
media that the National Security Adviser (NSA), Sambo Dasuki,
ordered the arrest of Aminu Waziri Tambuwal at a meeting with Vice
President Namadi Sambo and Inspector General of Police Suleman
Abba”.
The Director, Special Duties in the Office of NSA, Colonel Bello Fadile
(rtd), stated this in a statement.
“It is not only untrue and mere fabricated reports that the NSA met
with the VP and ordered the arrest of Hon Tambuwal, the fact is that
the National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki, has been outside the
country since Wednesday on pressing national security issues”, the
statement said.
“To the best of our knowledge, there is no order for the arrest of Hon.
Aminu Waziri Tambuwal of the House of Representatives.
“We therefore urge the media to always cross-check their stories
before going to press.”
Police spokesman, DCP Emmanuel Ojukwu, also denied any move to
arrest Tambuwal.
“It lies with the investigators to determine who should be quizzed and/
or prosecuted, as the case may be for criminal acts”, Ojukwu stated.
‘Leave Jonathan out of NASS invasion’
Yesterday, the Presidency said Jonathan did not authorise the
Thursday’s police invasion of the National Assembly.
“The matter is being investigated; we should await the outcome of the
investigations and so I urge that we should all refrain from saying
anything that may be prejudicial, partisan or uninformed as some
people are already doing, which may then turn out to be incorrect. But
I can tell you that President Jonathan did not authorise any form of
assault on the National Assembly. He has no hand in it. The police
authorities themselves have said that they acted on their own, based
on information that some thugs were planning to cause mayhem and
compromise the safety of lawmakers. Let the police explain exactly
what happened. And they have said they will. This is certainly not
about President Jonathan. He has a very excellent relationship with the
National Assembly”, Special Adviser to the President on Media and
Publicity, Dr Reuben Abati, told Sunday Vanguard in an interview.
Senate Minority Whip condemns invasion
In a related development, the Senate Minority Whip and Chairman of
the upper legislative chamber Committee on Capital Market, Senator
Ganiyu Olanrewaju Solomon (GOS), condemned in strongest terms the
parliament invasion.
Solomon, running for governor in Lagos State on the platform of the
APC said in Lagos, yesterday, that the police attack on the federal
lawmakers was the height of executive lawlessness and interference.
He noted that the invasion of the hallowed chambers was a signal that
the police might not be impartial in the February 2015 general election.
The front-runner aspirant called on the Inspector-General of Police,
Suleiman Abba, to maintain neutrality in political matters and remain
impartial in contests among the political parties.
Solomon, who was a member of the House of Representatives before
being elected to the Senate, pointed out that the issue of the defection
and speakership of Tambuwal should be left to the members to resolve
and not the executive coming into it to muscle him out of office.
Speaking in the same vein, yesterday, a former Lagos State
Commissioner of Police, Alhaji Abibakar Tsav, lamented that officers of
the police were being reduced to thugs by desperate politicians, to
breach the laws of Nigeria.
Tsav cautioned: “The use of the police against perceived opposition
will usher in anarchy”.
He said what was exhibited at the National Assembly, on Thursday,
was not only disgraceful and shameful but showed immaturity and
intolerance by the Peoples
http://www.vanguardngr.com/2014/11/dont-arrest-tambuwal-apc-warns/

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