The National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Prince Uche Secondus, has alleged that the Presidency and the All Progressives Congress (APC) were arm-twisting the technocrat officials of the National Assembly to fashion out favourable ways to enable them hijack the 9th assembly.
Secondus, in a statement on Monday by his Special Adviser on Media, Ike Abonyi, said the Executive was trying to take over the 9th Assembly so as to realize “their long held aspiration of hijacking the legislature” which he claimed began in August last year during the “state sponsored stealing of the Senate mace and the aborted illegal seizure of the 8th Assembly.”
According to the PDP chieftain, available intelligence to the party showed that the Presidency and the APC had concluded plans to use intimidation and coercion against legislators not ready to do their bidding “in their desperation to hoist leadership” on the legislators.
The PDP chief cautioned President Muhammadu Buhari and the APC against muzzling the legislature, saying the principles of separation of powers among the executive, legislature and the judiciary must be respected.
He said the apparent disregard to the basic principles of separation of powers by the present regime pointed to dictatorship.
“Indications are clearly showing that full blown dictatorship is brewing in our country. When a supposed democratic government brazenly muscles all the other arms of government, the legislature, the judiciary and even the press – the fourth estate of the realm – we should be worried at what is loading in our polity,” Secondus said.
He appealed to the 9th assembly members to refuse to be intimidated into doing the bidding of the Presidency and the APC.
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