PDP To Buhari: Stop Feasting, Visit Dapchi Now
BY SEGUN ADEBAYO, ABUJA – The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has challenged President Muhammadu Buhari to visit Dapchi for on-the-spot information on the abduction of the 110 school girls at Government Girls Science and Technical College (GGSTC), Dapchi, Yobe State, on February 19, 2018.
The main opposition Party on Tuesday described as disheartening the merry-making and feasting by the All Progressives Congress (APC) chieftains at a time parents are agonizing about their missing daughters under the watch of Mr President.
It therefore maintained that the President’s visit to Dapchi will show leadership; unearth first hand information on circumstances surrounding the abduction; and also bridge the seeming disconnect between the Presidency and Nigerians given accusations of Mr President’s detachment from the people.
In apparent reference to the recent APC Caucus and National Executive Committee (NEC) meetings in Abuja, the PDP said it was disheartening that while the parents of ‘our abducted daughters are wailing,’ the President is busy dining with APC leaders and plotting ‘their bound-to-fail’ 2019 re-election campaign.
The President must “show leadership by immediately calling off his feasting in the Presidential Villa and take that bold step to visit Dapchi, where a soothing word from him will be a balm for the distraught community”, the PDP said
The PDP, in a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Mr Kola Ologbondiyan, further stated that; “President Buhari has completely reneged on his assurances, before his election, to be a father to all and to lead the fight against insurgency from the fronts”.
According to Ologbondiyan, “Nigerians are worried that he has now allowed himself to be holed in the safety and luxury of the presidential villa while citizens are being slaughtered and taken captives by marauders and insurgents.”
“Nigerians are shocked that the presidential mandate of protecting lives has now been reduced to a cosmetic dispatching of ministers and persons with no knowledge of security, including those known to be falsifying performance indices, on mere fact-finding missions, while machinery for proactive security measures are left unattended”, the PDP said.
For the PDP spokesperson, it is regrettable that “Nigerians are daily slaughtered and taken as captives because those who have the direct mandate to protect them are more interested in their ill-lucked 2019 re-election ambition while the citizens are left to whatever fate befell them.
“Painfully, Nigerians are yet to see any concrete action taken by the Buhari Presidency to apprehend the perpetrators of the gruesome killings in Benue, Taraba, Zamfara, Adamawa, Borno, Plateau, Nasarawa and Yobe among other states where our citizens are being hacked down by marauders and insurgents.”
Claiming that Nigerians “are yet to see any step so far taken, outside empty promises, to end or even reduce the carnage”, Ologbondiyan’s statement also said; “Most appalling is the fact that while the parents of our 110 abducted Dapchi daughters are still wailing and insurgents driving into deeper recesses, the President and his party men are busy feasting in the Presidential villa and plotting their 2019 campaigns; of course, with funds meant for the wellbeing of the people and our nation.”
Accusing the governing Party of being insensitive to the plights of Nigerians in the face of biting hardship in the country, the PDP said; “Indeed, this President Buhari-led and discredited APC-controlled Federal Government holds Nigerians in total disdain. This administration is completely insensitive to the plight of the people and it is not a surprise that majority of Nigerians are more than prepared to reject them at the polls come 2019”.
