Caution Buhari to refrain from rigging 2019 polls, PDP tells Prince Charles

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) welcomes British Prince Charles to Nigeria and urged him to caution President Muhammadu Buhari against rigging the 2019 general elections.

The PDP also asked the British royalty to caution Buhari against continued violation of human rights, siege on democratic institutions, political intolerance and stifling of opposition and free speech in the country under his watch.

In a statement on Tuesday by its National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, the party also called on Prince Charles to take President Buhari to task on his administration’s “cavernous corruption disobedience to court orders, as well as its divisive proclivities, aloofness and insensitivity to the plight of Nigerians leading to escalation of violence and killings in various parts of our country” in the last three and half years.

The statement reads further: “The PDP further urges the British leader to counsel President Buhari not to attempt to rig the 2019 Presidential election but be ready to accept his imminent defeat in the polls, since it is clear that Nigerians have rejected him because of his incompetence and his administration’s apparent disdain for their safety and wellbeing.

“The British leader is invited to note that the Buhari administration has reversed all the political and social gains made by Nigeria since independence while pushing the nation to the brinks with its anti-democratic tendencies and desperation to hang on to power beyond May 29, 2019.

“The Buhari administration has completely eroded the values of freedom of association, personal liberty, free speech, national cohesion, free enterprise, political tolerance and our stencils for economic growth.

“Instead, it has plunged our nation into avoidable security challenges and the worst economic recession, with attendant daily bloodletting, acute hunger and starvation, escalated joblessness, high mortality rate and unprecedented stress on families.

“Under the Buhari-led failed administration, our nation, once known for her robust economy and a happy citizenry, has become the home to world’s poorest persons; where opposition is an endangered species and where  citizens daily fall victims of arbitrary killing and mass burials, extra-judicial executions, illegal arrests and detention, extreme torture and reported disappearances, as captured in the reports by various world bodies.

“The PDP therefore calls on Britain to take a decisive steps to caution  this administration and assist in rescuing our nation and returning it  to the path of good governance and national stability, which has eluded  her in the last three and half years.”