The Senator Ahmed Makarfi-led National Caretaker Committee of the PDP yesterday asked President Muhammadu Buhari to give directive for the immediate release of former governors of Jigawa, Benue and Niger states from detention.
The faction described the arrest a former governor of Jigawa State, Sule Lamido, on Sunday in Kano, as “outrageous, unwarranted and anti-democratic.”
Makarfi said recent anti-democratic tendencies of the ruling APC pointed to the fact that “Nigeria’s democracy is nose-diving.”
A statement yesterday by the spokesman of the Makarfi PDP faction, Prince Dayo Adeyeye, said the arrest and detention of the former governor was a strategy by the APC-led government to prevent him from effectively campaigning and mobilising the people for the forthcoming local government election in Jigawa State.
”For the record, President Muhammadu Buhari before the 2011 general elections made several inciting statements against rigging with grave consequences thereafter. He was neither arrested nor detained.
“Nigerians cannot also forget some inciting statements credited to President Buhari ahead of the 2015 general elections especially.
“General Buhari while addressing (defunct) Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) members in Niger State, incited his audience in Hausa language that translates thus, ‘..If what happened in 2011 should happen again in 2015, by the grace of God, the dog and the baboon would all be soaked in blood.’
“For this statement and others as well, he was never invited, arrested or detained by any of the security agencies under the PDP administration. It was not a sign of weakness by the PDP-led government; it was in deference to freedom of speech, democracy and peace.
“We are therefore calling on security agencies in the country to release unconditionally, ex-governor Sule Lamido, the former governor of Benue State, Gabriel Suswam, former governor of Niger State, Dr Babangida Aliyu and all other political detainees in their custody. We are in a democracy and not a Gestapo state,” the statement said.
