PDP wants National Assembly to move against Buhari

Nigeria’s leading opposition party, People’s Democratic Party (PDP) has urged the country’s National Assembly to move against President Muhammadu Buhari after secret service operatives prevented lawmakers from entering the assembly earlier on Tuesday.

The People’s Democratic Party accused the Nigerian Presidency of being behind the blockade. But the Nigerian government denied any wrongdoing.

The blockade came two weeks after both Senate President Bukola Saraki and his deputy Ike Ekweremadu were prevented from leaving their homes by men of the Nigerian police.

“Buhari and his APC have consecutively and deliberately put our nation and its democracy on harm’s way and the National Assembly and the National Assembly, as representatives of the people, must eschew all partisan interests and save the nation by immediately deploying all legislative instruments against President Buhari before it is too late,” PDP spokesman Kola Ologbodiyan said on Tuesday.

Nigeria’s acting president Yemi Osinbajo sacked the Director-General of the DSS Lawal Daura and described the invasion of the National Assembly by the DSS agents as “a gross violation of the constitutional order, rule of law and all accepted notions of law and order.”

Daura has also been arrested and detained by the police.

But Ologbodiyan insisted that the National Assembly should “immediately pull the full weight of all legislative instruments against President Muhammadu Buhari, as that is the only way to save our nation from an imminent collapse.”

The party said in sending armed security men to invade the National Assembly and block lawmakers from accessing the legislative chambers, “President Buhari has crossed the line by placing our democracy in jeopardy, thus setting our nation on the path of anarchy.”

The party last week accused the APC government of planning to invade the National Assembly and impeach Senate President Bukola Saraki who only recently defected to the PDP from APC.

It said President Buhari’s 10-day holiday in London was a part of the grand scheme aimed cowing the National Assembly, especially members of the assembly that are in the opposition.

“President Buhari is now jetting out of the country so as to appear innocent and oblivious of the political terrors about to be unleashed on the National Assembly,” PDP spokesman, Kola Ologbodiyan said in a separate statement last Wednesday.

“The party is aware of plots already perfected in a meeting, on Wednesday night, between the Presidency and some compromised All Progressives Congress (APC) senators, who are now in the minority, to forcefully reconvene the Senate with protection from security agencies, with a view to impeach Senate President Bukola Saraki and Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu.”