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Ndubuisi Orji, Abuja
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has described President Muhammadu Buhari’s resort to the classification of the wanton killings going on under his watch along religious lines as scandalous.
The party in a statement by its spokesman, Kola Ologbondiyan, faulted the President for attempting to rationalise the failure of his administration to end insurgency and likings by stating that 90 percent of those killed by terrorists are members of a particular religion.
Similarly, former vice president Atiku Abubakar, criticised the president’s comment, saying killings by Boko Haram should not be justified irrespective of the religious affiliation of the victims.
Reacting via a tweet yesterday, Atiku said the killings should only be “condemned unequivocally.”
Quoting a verse of the Qur’an (chapter 2 verse 256), he said religion is about love, and not compulsion.
“We mustn’t rationalise killings. Whether Christian, Muslim, Traditionalist, or Atheist, the killing of any human being, by Boko Haram, or any misguided group, is wrong & should be condemned unequivocally. There is no compulsion in religion. Only love,” he tweeted.
Similarly, the opposition party argued that the killing of any Nigerian, anywhere by terrorists or bandits, irrespective of religion, ethnicity or class, can never be rationalised under any guise.
“Our party holds that for President Buhari, a Commander-in-Chief, who promised to fight from the fronts and now holds all the paraphernalia of power, and on whose shoulders the security of the nation rests, to make such a statement leaves no one in doubt that the Buhari Presidency has reached its wits end, exhausted its propaganda, and has no solutions to offer.”
It said President Buhari and the APC must acknowledge that every life is precious irrespective of religion, and “that this obnoxious body count as rationalisation for failure is completely unacceptable.”
The PDP admonished Buhari to immediately apologise for his comment, accept failure, as well as rejig the security high command by engaging more competent hands to effectively tackle the security challenges.
According to the party, what Nigerians want to hear from President Buhari is the arrest and prosecution of perpetrators of mass killings in Benue, Plateau, Kogi, Niger, Yobe, Adamawa, Kano, Kaduna, Katsina and other parts of the country and not which religious group was suffering more casualties.
