The Speaker of the House of Representative, Hon Yakubu Dogara on Thursday challenged the Borno and the Northern leaders to break their silence and speak out against the worsening insecurity situation in that part of the country as they did in 2015, while the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was in power.
Dogara who stated this yesterday while speaking at the PDP Rally in Lafia, Nasarawa State, pointed out the 2019 election “is not about Buhari and not about Atiku, but a referendum about insecurity and hunger in this land.”
According to him, “on the issue of insecurity, all of us know what is happening at Borno, in Abuja, Kaduna, Zamfara and Katsina, even Sokoto now. And even Nasarawa state, Benue and Plateau state. I cannot even mention all, it is a general problem in the country. But I only mentioned the state where the situation is so endemic.”
“Where are Borno Elders now? Where are the leaders of Northern Nigeria where this problem has become endemic? What are they saying? The truth is that if we don’t rise to challenge this, sooner than later if things continue this way, we are not going to have a country. So, it is our responsibility to rescue Nigeria from the clutches of insecurity, because without security we cannot even understand the meaning of democracy.
“Now the sad commentary about the elites in Nigeria is that we have all by our silence, become an enabler to those who have been unable to tackle this insecurity. And you know what enabler do? Enabler doesn’t build a country, they only instigate or worship an individual to a position where they will compare such a person with God, and none of us was built to receive worship. Any human being who accepts worship will meet destruction.
“That is why we are witnessing destruction in Nigeria because we have elevated some human beings to the status of God. And we need to rise up as a people to rescue the country from the clutches of insecurity.
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“The last issue today is a referendum on education in 2019 election. It is said that if you want to destroy a community or a state, or if you want to destroy a nation, don’t even fire a shot, don’t even build crisis that is being perpetrated around, don’t even bring nuclear bomb, all you do is to lower the standard of education in that society, community or nation. Once you succeeded in doing that, you have killed the nation. You may not understand what I am talking about here”.
According to him, “right now in Nigeria universities, lecturers are on strike, if it was a decent government that is committed to the future of this country, it wouldn’t take one week to resolve this problem. Unfortunately, this problem is lingering and if we shut down education, we have shut down progress, shut down the future for our teaming youths who are gathered here. We shut down progress for this country called Nigeria”.
Speaking in the same vein, the Presidential Candidate of the Party, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, declared that insecurity was escalating in the country due to the incompetence of the All Progressives Congress (APC) administration.
Atiku raised the alarm that right now the APC was not campaigning because it planned to rig the 2019 presidential election by all possible means.
According to him, “Nigeria is witnessing destruction because those he called enablers have resorted to worshipping an individual and comparing such a person with God.
Atiku who promised to address unemployment crisis pledged to give 40 per cent of his government to the youth and 30 per cent to the women, “making a total of 70 per cent, this is because I want you to succeed us.”
According to him, “do you want to continue with the insecurity in this country? Before they said it was only North-east, today the insecurity has gone to North-west, it has gone to North-central, do you want to continue with these?
“Because they don’t know how to govern, and if you don’t want to continue with all these vices, I appeal to you to vote for PDP.”
On his own, the National Chairman of the Party, Prince Uche Secondus challenged President Muhammadu Buhari to stop hiding in the Presidential Villa and come out and engage the people in public debate as being done now by other Presidential Candidates.
Secondus said Nigerians must elect a President they could see and feel, stressing that Nigeria could no longer afford analogue leaders in the digital era.
He pointed out that while the PDP candidate and leaders were engaging the people for votes, President Buhari and APC leaders were hiding in the Villa planning how to rig the election.
According to him, “but let me reiterate this warning to them including the Independent National Eceltoral Commission, INEC, and security agencies, that any attempt to manipulate the election would be an invitation to a national crisis.
“If they love this country, they must not attempt to thwart the will of the people because it would be a recipe for crisis.”
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