Auno killings: Buhari should have cut short his Ethiopian visit ― PDP

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), on Tuesday, asserted that the inaction of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration on the spiralled wave of killings, banditry and kidnapping, particularly the Sunday carnage in Auno, Borno State, by insurgents, has left the nation with no other option than to hold that the Buhari Presidency has abandoned Nigerians.

The main opposition party maintained that the president ought to have cut short his visit to Ethiopia because of the massacre of innocent passengers in the town near Maiduguri.

In a statement issued by Kola Ologbondiyan, the party’s National Publicity Secretary, PDP described as alarming, that all the Buhari Presidency can offer in the face of the killings of citizens are condolence statements with no decisive and significant action to track down the perpetrators and end insurgency in the country.

The PDP said it is disheartening that instead of settling down at home and attending to the worsened insecurity under his watch, the president and his officials are busy globetrotting.

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The party noted that in normal climes, with the situation in Auno, where insurgents viciously massacred citizens, a concerned President would have immediately left everything, wherever he is, and return home in solidarity with the nation as well as the victims and lead from the front, in confronting the insurgents, in line with the demand of his office and the promise he made to Nigerians.

It added: “But no! All the Buhari Presidency could do is to issue statements of condemnation, without a corresponding decisive action; thereby leaving the citizens at the mercy of insurgents, marauders and kidnappers.

“Indeed, what Nigerians want from the Presidency is a significant action and not press releases full of empty claims and worthless assurances.”

The PDP lamented that despite the sustained killings, including the massacre of the last three weeks in Gamboru, Gwoza and Dikwa in Borno state, Tawari in Kogi State, Kulben in Plateau State, Gumni, in Zamfara as well as in Kaduna and Yobe States, the Buhari Presidency chose to continue to live in denial and self-praise, instead of taking any concrete action to end the carnage.

“It is shocking that in spite of the deteriorating situation, President Buhari has continued to shun demands by Nigerians including the National Assembly and other patriotic groups and individuals to rejig his security high command and inject new blood to effectively tackle the situation at hand,” the party stated.

It added: “Our party holds that the manifest poor handling of security challenges of the country, as further manifested in the inaction on the Auno killings, has further raised apprehensions that the Buhari Presidency has laid down its amour and has no solutions to offer.”

The PDP, however, commended the courage of the nation’s gallant troops in the front and urged Nigerians to keep hope alive and not despair “in the face of the failures of the Buhari Presidency, which holds a trophy as the most incompetent, divisive and negligent administration, which had also abdicated its duty, in the history of our nation.”