The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is fuming over the alleged presence of some Niger Republic nationals at President Muhammadu Buhari’s campaign rally in Kano on Thursday.
The party yesterday branded the Nigeriens as mercenaries and said their presence at the APC rally was a threat to national security.
But the Director, Field Operation of the APC Presidential Campaign Council, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, said the presence of two governors from Niger Republic at the event will have no bearing on the February 16 election.
He said the men might have come as a result of their belief in the achievements of the President.
Addressing reporters yesterday in Abuja, the National Publicity Secretary of the PDP, Mr. Kola Ologbondiyan, claimed that the APC had brought ‘miscreants’ into the country to aid it in winning the election.
He said: “The APC and the Buhari Presidency must immediately explain the roles being played by Issa Moussa, Governor of Zinder, and his counterpart from Maradi, Zakiri Umar, both of the Niger Republic, who were sighted decked in the attire and official logos of the APC.
“Our security agencies must immediately investigate and lay in the public domain the circumstances leading to their presence which more or less confirms that the APC has lost all domestic credibility and has assumed a desperate mode.
“The presence of the Niger Republic governors at President Buhari’s rally signposts a direct assault on the credibility of the presidential election.
“This is particularly against the backdrop of INEC’s plans to allow Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in that country to vote in our elections, a situation that opens the way for aliens to infiltrate as IDPs and participate in our elections”
The opposition party said its apprehension was accentuated by INEC’s recent mass creation of additional polling units which have not been properly designated and which may be deployed for the perpetuation of monumental electoral fraud.
It said that in 2015, Kano State alone delivered 1.9 million votes to the APC presidential candidate in circumstances devoid of transparency and credulity.
The party also expressed misgivings at a recent declaration by the Kano State Governor, Abdullahi Ganduje, that Kano would deliver five million votes to President Buhari in the 2019 election.
According to the PDP, Ganduje’s declaration could be predicated on the unfettered opening of the nation’s international borders to foreign political interests.
However, Ribadu answering reporters’ questions in Abuja yesterday at a workshop for volunteers who will serve as canvassers for the party during its house-to-house campaign, said: “I don’t think there is anything wrong and I don’t think there is any crime committed on account of the presence of the Niger governors at the Kano rally.”
He added: “It is a free world and it is the constitutional right of everyone to be where he wants to be.
“You have no right to curtail anybody from doing what he wants to do. People from West Africa are free to move into Nigeria. We have a protocol or agreement that they don’t need a visa to come into this country.
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“I know for sure that they don’t have the vote, but as a free West African who believes that someone has done extremely well, and decided to identify himself with what he believes in, I don’t think there is anything wrong and I don’t think there is any crime committed.
“You cannot and you have no right as a Nigerian to stop them from exercising their fundamental right to identify with their friends.
“Their presence may or may not have any impact on the re-election of the President, but they are entitled to it.
“We have to guarantee their freedom because their presence is within the law and we don’t have right to stop them.”
Also speaking at the event, the Director General of the Consumer Protection Council (CPC), Babatunde Irukera, said Buhari’s record of service will speak for him in the election.
Irukera told the canvassers to show that they have a government that is planting seeds of prosperity for our future.
He said: “We have 500, 000 N-Power volunteers in 774 local government areas in the country. It is the very first of its kind.
“There is no local government that you will go to that you will not see the N-Power volunteers. Market money, which is money that is given to artisans, is the same thing in the 36 states and 774 local government areas.”
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