The opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP) has urged the Federal Government to admit the fact that poverty, internal conflicts, bloodletting, banditry, kidnapping, insurgency, abuse of human rights and general national insecurity have escalated under the current administration.
Such an admission would be the appropriate response to the report by the United Nation’s Rapporteur, Agnes Callamard, which said the government had not done enough to end the internal conflicts, including the herders/farmers clashes that have left many dead and thousands displaced internally, the party said.
The PDP stated this on Saturday, in a statement signed by the National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan and made available to newsmen in Abuja.
PDP said the report of the UN Rapporteur only highlighted the the grave security issues in the country, which are already, which it said are in the international domain, saying that the government should seek help, rather than picking a fight with the Rapporteur. President Muhammadu Buhari should also abort his planned trip to New York to attend the UN General Assembly next week.
Callamard, United Nations Special Rapporteur for Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions, spent twelve days in Nigeria, from 19 August to 3 September 2019, at end of which she noted that the “overall situation that I encountered in Nigeria gives rise to extreme concern.”
“By many measures, the Federal authorities and the international partners are presiding over an injustice-pressure cooker. Some of the specific contexts I examined are simmering,” the report said.
On its part, the PDP said the “the UN Rapporteur report only reinforces the positions of credible international bodies including the United States Department of State, Amnesty International (AI) and Transparency International (TI) which also reported cases of arbitrary and extra-judicial killings, illegal arrests, arbitrary detention, torture, festering violence, reported disappearances and abuse of human rights under the Buhari administration,” PDP said.
Callamard also noted that: “The warning signs are flashing bright red: increased numbers of attacks and killings over the last five years with a few notable exceptions; increased criminality and spreading insecurity; widespread failure by the federal authorities to investigate and hold perpetrators to account, even for mass killings; a lack of public trust and confidence in the judicial institutions and State institutions more generally; high levels of resentment and grievances within and between communities.”
“Moreover, the PDP holds that the UN report is a vindication of its stance as well as that of millions of Nigerians that the ineptitude and repressive tendencies of the All Progressives Congress (APC) administration under President Buhari are emboldening acts of violence and fuelling impunity, division and intolerance in the polity,” the former ruling party said.
The ruling APC was yet to comment on the issue at the time of this report. Lanre Issa-Onilu, its National Publicity Secretary, had not responded to phone calls made to him nor replied to a text message sent to him by BusinessDay correspondent on Saturday.
“Today, Nigeria is becoming one of the most insecure places to live. Citizens can no longer move freely around their country as marauders, kidnappers, insurgents and bandits take over the highways, pillage communities, kill and take citizens captive at will,” Ologbondiyan said.
