The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) yesterday applauded the resolution by the British Parliament to impose travel restriction and visa ban to officials of the President Muhammadu Buhari-led All Progressives Congress (APC) administration involved in the violation of human rights, including the shooting and killing of unarmed and peaceful protesters in Nigeria.
The PDP, however, urged the United Nations and other international bodies to immediately list indicted officials of the President Buhari’s government for the widespread crime against humanity going on in the country in the last five years.
According to a statement issued by the National Publicity Secretary of the PDP, Kola Ologbondiyan, “Our party also urges the British Government to extend the proposed sanctions to include the freezing of assets and funds belonging to such officials and their families in the United Kingdom.
“We also call on other countries, including United States, France, the United Arab Emirates, South Africa, among others, to impose similar sanctions against indicted officials of the Buhari administration for human rights violations and crime against humanity.
“Such sanctions should also be imposed on officials indicted for undermining our democracy and electoral system.”
The PDP said the international community must call out President Buhari, as the buck stops on his table, as the commander-in-chief, under whose watch human rights violations, including arbitrary arrests and detention in dehumanising facilities, widespread extrajudicial killings, sudden disappearances of dissenting voices, disregard to rule of law, disobedience to court orders and foisting of siege mentality on the citizenry have become the order of the day.
Indeed, the party said: “The manifest use of brute force, including the deployment of the military with live ammunition, in addition to recruiting armed thugs to attack and kill innocent Nigerian youths, who were in peaceful demonstration against widespread police brutality and other systemic injustices, underscores the horrible situation in Nigeria under President Buhari as detailed in earlier reports by Amnesty International and US Department of State among other international bodies.”
According to the PDP, “Is it not frightening that the Buhari presidency has failed to come clean on who ordered the deployment of troops to Lekki Tollgate in Lagos, where unarmed demonstrators were shot and killed even while waving our national flag and singing our national anthem?
“Is it not equally frightening that the government has also failed to explain how armed thugs were seen being brought in security vans to unleash violence on demonstrators in Abuja and other parts of our country?
“Rather than providing answers to these troubling questions, the federal government is desperate to gag Nigerians, muzzle the media, shut down the social media and even threatening the international media, including CNN, for carrying out an investigative report on the Lekki killing, while its officials continue to make contradicting claims on the matter.”
Moreover, the PDP said the administration had turned a deaf ear to the demand for an independent National Truth Commission on the killings, adding that such stance only points to desperation for a huge cover up in the face of demand for answers by Nigerians and the international community.
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