Former Deputy National Publicity Secretary of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Comrade Timi Frank, has claimed that there were ongoing plans by President Muhammadu Buhari government to arrest the Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki; presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, Atiku Abubakar; House of Representatives Speaker, Yakubu Dogara; and National Chairman of PDP, Prince Uche Secondus.
\nFrank made this claim in a statement he signed and forwarded to newsmen yesterday.
\nHe also condemned in strong terms the ongoing police siege on Senator Dino Melaye\u2019s Abuja home.
\nHe said the government was plotting to arrest Melaye and keep him out of circulation ahead of the 2019 polls.
\nFrank described the invasion of the lawmaker\u2019s residence as a part of the Buhari administration\u2019s latest strategy to forcefully incarcerate vocal members of the opposition in order to pave way for APC\u2019s victory in the forthcoming polls.
\nHe added: \u201cThis is condemnable and unacceptable in a democracy.
\n\u201cEarlier in the life of this dictatorial administration, agents of the Department of State Services, DSS, forcefully gained entrance into the residence of some Judicial Officers in the midnight, all in the name of anti-corruption crusade.
\n\u201cThe Nigeria police has now taken this impunity a notch higher by disconnecting water and power supply from the House of a Federal legislator for no justifiable cause. This is the second time the police would besiege Melaye\u2019s house under the present Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris.
\n\u201cWe must all condemn this terrorist act being visited on a Nigerian citizen. Today it is Melaye. Tomorrow it might be you or me. Nobody is safe in this country any more.
\n\u201cIf you escape being mowed down by criminals and outlaws because of the inability of security forces to protect the people, the same security forces will come after you by breaking your house and disrupting your water and power supply, all in the name of trying to arrest you to face spurious charges.
\n\u201cWe know that no individual can be above the laws of a society, but when lawful agencies themselves break the law by turning themselves into political instruments of vendetta against perceived opposition figures, then they are invariably preparing grounds for chaos and anarchy to reign.
\n\u201cThey are doing this because they don\u2019t want the 2019 elections to hold. They fear defeat and they are seeing defeat. They want to scuttle the elections and blame it on unrest and insecurity.
\n\u201cIs it for nothing that the military that are battling to hold their own against Boko Haram insurgents in the northeast without success, recently announced that they will commence Operation Python Dance (operation intimidate opposition and rig elections for Buhari and APC) throughout the entire states of the federation in January?
\n\u201cIs it for nothing that the police, whose over 100 of its personnel deployed to fight Boko Haram alongside the military in the Northeast recently abdicated their duty posts? Yet they have enough personnel to lay siege on Melaye\u2019s house with a vow to stay there until they deliver him to jail.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Former Deputy National Publicity Secretary of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Comrade Timi Frank, has claimed that there were ongoing plans by President Muhammadu Buhari government to arrest the Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki; presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, Atiku Abubakar; House of Representatives Speaker, Yakubu Dogara; and National Chairman of PDP, Prince […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":191732,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-191727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-front-pix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191727","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=191727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191727\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/191732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=191727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=191727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=191727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}