Former Vice President and presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2019 election, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar has raised an alarm saying that on arrival from Dubai, yesterday morning, he was intimidated and searched by state security agents at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja.
\nAtiku on his Twitter handle said: \u201cI arrived to Abuja this morning to a search by agents of the state, aimed at intimidating me and my staff. \u2018I am committed to building a Nigeria where no citizen is intimidated by agents of state who are paid to protect them. \u2018Together, #LetsGetNigeriaWorkingAgain\u2019.\u201d
\nFormer Deputy National Publicity Secretary of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Comrade Timi Frank, revealed that a plot to embarrass the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, on arrival early hours, yesterday from Dubai was a failure.
\nFrank said Atiku, who returned to Nigeria around 1am, yesterday morning from his vacation in Dubai was thoroughly searched by a special squad of security men deployed by the Presidency for some hours with recording gadgets on them and in and around Atiku\u2019s aircraft.
\n\u201cNothing, was, however, found on him or in his aircraft.\u201d
\nAccording to Frank, plan to also drop bags of foreign currencies and other implicating things in Atiku\u2019s aircraft on his arrival was also unsuccessful.
\nIn a statement Timi Frank signed to raise an alarm, yesterday afternoon, he said the special squad of security men who carried out the search confessed that they were directed by the Presidency to embarrass the former vice president.
\nThe squad, Frank revealed were armed with recording gadgets in and out of Atiku\u2019s aircraft \u201cto see if he returned to the country with foreign currencies or any other implicating materials.\u201d
\nThe former APC spokesman said the security men were disappointed when nothing implicating could be found on either Atiku or his aircraft.
\nWhile condemning what he tagged President Muhammadu Buhari\u2019s move to desperately nail the PDP presidential candidate, Frank said if the former President Goodluck Jonathan was so harsh on President Buhari in 2015, he couldn\u2019t have occupied the office today.
\nFrank said since Atiku Abubakar left office as Vice President for eight years, \u201cthis is the first time out of desperation to nail him that he has been searched embarrassingly.\u201d
\nHe, however, warned President Buhari to desist from his act of desperation against the PDP presidential candidate.
\n\u201cDue to information at our disposal, I have been saying it that the PDP presidential candidate is not safe under this administration because the Buhari-led administration is deploying all manners of devilish strategies to nail all the opposition leaders especially, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar.
\n\u201cWe are using this medium to inform the international community to also take note of how the Buhari administration is intimidating the opposition presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, who has served Nigeria as Vice President for eight years.\u201d
\nMeanwhile, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has condemned in strong terms what it called the unleashing of a special security squad of army, police and paramilitary agents to physically harass its presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, at the Abuja airport, upon his return from Dubai.
\nIn a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, the party said it was shocking when the \u201cdeadly squad, in a gestapo style attack, and acting on orders from the above\u201d rushed Atiku after landing the Abuja airport and attempted to physically manhandle him before \u201cinvading his aircraft with dangerous weapons to conduct a violent search.\u201d
\nThe party said, \u201cWhile they did not find anything incriminating on our presidential candidate, this deadly squad, violently tampered with certain personal documents and gadgets belonging to him, including some of his campaign documents.\u201d
\n\u201cThe PDP completely rejects such violence against the person of our presidential candidate by the Buhari Presidency, which we know has been jittery over Atiku Abubakar\u2019s soaring popularity since his emergence as our candidate.\u201d
\n\u201cWe invite the world to note that having failed to drag down our presidential candidate with spurious allegations and smear campaign, the APC has now resorted to state-backed violence against him and must be held responsible should any harm befall him or any member of his campaign team.\u201d
\n\u201cThe PDP is for peace, but we will not accept this recourse to violence, which we believe is orchestrated to directly harm our Presidential candidate, foist a siege mentality on the system and set the stage for series of coordinated violence, ostensibly to truncate a peaceful conduct of the 2019 general election.\u201d
\n\u201cThe Buhari Presidency and the APC should bear in mind that this is an attack on our democracy and the collective sensibility of the overwhelming majority of Nigerians, across board, who have accepted the choice of Atiku Abubakar as Nigeria\u2019s next President and they will vigorously deploy every means available in a democracy to defend him and our democratic process.\u201d
\n\u201cToday, Atiku Abubakar, as a Presidential candidate, has the highest demography of supporters and volunteers across our nation and we will not hesitate to call them out in defence of democracy if another such attempt is made against our candidate.\u201d
\nAlso condemning the attack on Atiku, a former Minister of Aviation, Femi Fani-Kayode, has reacted to the alleged harassment of the People\u2019s Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, by security agents.
\nWhile condemning the alleged harassment, Fani-Kayode said the act was shameful.
\nHe tweeted, \u201cThe attempt to intimidate @atiku with security agents at the airport after his arrival in Abuja this morning is utterly shameful and I totally condemn it.
\n\u201cIt is the desperate act of a vicious, cowardly, weak, paranoid, dying and failed government who know that their time is over.\u201d
\nAlso reacting, former Ekiti State Governor, Ayodele Fayose condemned the alleged harassment of the People\u2019s Democratic Party (PDP), presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, by security agents.
\nReacting on Twitter, Fayose said the embarrassment of the PDP presidential candidate by security agents means that the end of dictatorship was close.
\nHe wrote, \u201cWhen dictatorship is closer to its inglorious end, it employs all tactics including, the most absurd.
\n\u201cSubjecting a former VP of Nigeria to all manners of embarrassment at the Airport just because he is now the candidate of the @OfficialPDPNig is not unexpected. His time is up!\u201d
\nAlso, Ben Murray-Bruce, the Senator representing Bayelsa East, has condemned the alleged harassment of the presidential candidate of the People\u2019s Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar by security agents.
\nBen Bruce condemned the harassment of the Wazirin Adamawa.
\nHe urged President Muhammadu Buhari\u2019s government to leave Atiku alone and not turn Nigeria to a \u2018dictator state\u2019.
\nThe Bayelsa lawmaker wrote: \u201cI totally condemn this reckless harassment of Atiku the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, as he landed in Abuja.
\n\u201cNigeria is not a fascist state. We will not return to a jackboot dictatorship. This government should face Atiku at the polls, not with force.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Former Vice President and presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2019 election, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar has raised an alarm saying that on arrival from Dubai, yesterday morning, he was intimidated and searched by state security agents at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja. Atiku on his Twitter handle said: \u201cI arrived […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":189618,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-189617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-front-pix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=189617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189617\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/189618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=189617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=189617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=189617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}