People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Chief Sunny Onuesoke, has described President Muhammadu Buhari’s declaration that death awaits anyone who snatches ballot boxes during the February 23 Presidential and National Assembly elections as a call to violence.
Buhari had, on Monday while speaking at a national caucus meeting of the All Progressives Congress in Abuja, said ballot box snatchers would pay with their lives as security agencies had been given the go-ahead to be ruthless with them.
Speaking to newsmen in Warri, Delta State, on Tuesday, Onuesoke said as President of the country, giving such orders to a trigger-happy security operative to shoot electoral offenders at sight could be very catastrophic and should be described as a call to chaos and anarchy.
The PDP Chieftain argued that such order could lead to serial extrajudicial killings of innocent Nigerians hence overzealous security agents could take laws into their hands by shooting anyone they have issues with and then arrange for ballot boxes to justify their actions.
“What people should understand is that everybody is a potential ballot box snatcher in the hands of biased trigger, happy soldiers and policemen.
“They would be all too willing to kill anyone, who stands in the way of any opposing rigging done by the party they support. People are behaving as if our military and police force are neutral, assume that at your peril,” he stated.
According to him, “I don’t support ballot snatching. I only condemn death punishment Buhari used for offenders, that is very despicable and callous,” describing Buhari’s directive to the military as “clearly unconstitutional.”
Onuesoke, who said Buhari should have been the last person to make such a dangerous pronouncement, advised the President to apologise to Nigerians.
“I don’t support ballot snatching. I only condemn death punishment Buhari used for offenders, that is very despicable and callous.
“No patriotic Nigerian will support ballot snatching, ballot stuffing et al, however, what a leader is expected to do in this kind of situation is to warn the generality moderately and possibly by saying that security agencies will deal appropriately with anybody found disorganizing the electoral process.
“But this utterance of people paying with their lives will give the impression to the outside world that we have no president, but a military junta,” Onuesoke submitted.