Mr. Ayo Opadokun, chieftain of National Democratic Coalition (NADECO), has said that President Muhammadu Buhari has refused to drop the toga of dictatorship, even as a democratic elected president.
While speaking with newsmen in Lagos on Monday, Opadokun maintained that the refusal of the president and Federal Government agencies to obey the rule of law was very disturbing, insisting that he knew what it meant to be denied freedom.
The NADECO chieftain said that after what they had done in NADECO as pro-democracy activists, it would be laughable to say there had been any appreciable change in the issue of respect of human rights and freedom of people as citizens of the country.
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“All that we have done in NADECO have been reduced to nothing to see the country degenerate to a banana republic. The president has not performed well in the area of respect for rule of law. I can appreciate his fight against corruption but he has failed to leave the toga of dictatorship even as a democratically elected president.
“Buhari has not changed from what he was in1984. Someone was granted bail by a court of competent jurisdiction and you have refused to let him have his freedom. You cannot over emphasis the value of freedom. It is highly treasurable,” he said.
He stressed that for a country to be democratic, the rule of law remained sacrosanct and any government that would not respect the rule of law had done the citizens great disservice.
Opadokun said that a country where people would not have liberty to express their freedom as enshrined in the constitution would live like people whose destinies were mortgaged.
