PDP to Buhari: Nigerians have right to demand restructuring

The People’s Democratic Party (PDP) has told President Muhammadu Buhari that Nigerians, as citizens of a democratic state, have every right to demand constitutional restructuring and a democratic forum to deliberate on good governance and national cohesion.

The PDP, in a statement Sunday by its spokesman, Kola Ologbondiyan, noted that such demands are neither synonymous nor contiguous to warfare.

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The party was responding to a comment credited to Buhari on Saturday that the demand by Nigerians for constitutional restructuring was contiguous with warfare.

“It is appalling, and to say the least, despicable, that Mr. President and his party, the APC, who came to power in 2015 on the promise of restructuring, have not only reneged, in utter duplicity towards Nigerians, but also turned around, six years after, to label restructuring as warfare and Nigerians demanding for it as “mischievously dangerous.

“President Buhari should be tutored to know that even the quest for efficient local government system as well as an effectual judiciary, which he alluded to as a focus, can only be achieved through a constitutional restructuring that directly confers and vests the required powers and control to them.

“Only recently, President Buhari confessed how he asked some state governors who came to him on issues of security to go back to their respective states and face the challenge.

“The amendment or alteration of the constitution to permit state police as widely demanded by Nigerians is therefore a form of restructuring that will adjust our policing system without creating a war.

“In as much as the PDP holds the unity and indivisibility of our nation as supreme, our party however supports amendments that will alter the 1999 Constitution (as amended) in any manners that will engender good governance and reinforce, rather than detract from her unity, peace, equity and stability.”