The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, has called on the National Assembly to immediately open an inquest into the shocking report by the Wall Street Journal, WSJ, asserting the secret burial of 1,000 Nigerian soldiers, allegedly killed in the anti-insurgency war in the Northeast.
The party in a statement signed by its spokesman, Kola Ologbondiyan, demanded that the National Assembly should respond to the apprehensions of Nigerians by immediately setting up a special security committee to conduct a forensic investigation into the truth or otherwise of the report.
The party wants this done with the tenor and mode as prescribed for security issues in the 1999 Constitution (as Amended).
The PDP said its demand was predicated on the brazen attempt by the Buhari Presidency to politicize such huge security issue by making uncomplimentary allusions to the plight of the troops, in yet another unpatriotic and insensitive press release on the state of our nation.
The party said it was unfortunate that at this time when patriotic Nigerians were distressed about the wellbeing of the nation’s gallant soldiers and seeking for solutions to the challenges they face in the front, “the Buhari Presidency was rather issuing press statements, just like the one it released on Friday, August 2, 2019, wherein it leveraged on the plight of of the soldiers to boast on how to retain a stolen presidential mandate.”
The PDP expressed dismay that “instead of showing concern over the fate of our troops, taking concrete steps on the issue at stake and reassuring an anxious nation, the Buhari Presidency is rather seeking to draw political capital from our security challenges by flaunting a despicable self-confidence on the Presidential election petition pending in the Court of Appeal, and how, in its own words, “the judiciary would always come to conclusions”.
While noting that such comments send very wrong signals against the judiciary, the party urged the third arm of government to insulate herself from the nocturnal shenanigans of the All Progressives Congress, APC, and the cabal at the Presidency, which have gone into frenzy following the apparent collapse of their defence at the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal.
The PDP said while the Buhari Presidency, has with its latest stance on such grave security issue, further exhibited that it has come short of appropriate solutions to the security challenges facing the nation, waving off of such without the least effort to unravel the issues and reassure Nigerians, showed total failure of leadership.
“Our party thus stands solidly behind the people’s candidate, Atiku Abubakar, in his patriotic concerns over the report. Only a leader, who lacks genuine concern for his people, will gloat over such a report, as being witnessed under the Buhari administration,” the PDP said.
