Killings: PDP charges President to visit troubled areas

From Ndubuisi  Orji, Abuja

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has charged President Muhammadu Buhari to show leadership by visiting states ravaged by bandits.

The opposition party,  in a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Debo Ologunagba, yesterday, in Abuja, said President Buhari’s visit to the troubled states would be in line with his campaign promise to lead the fight against terrorism from the front.

While commiserating with victims of recent bandit attacks  in Sokoto, Niger, Plateau,Kastina and Kaduna states, it accused the All Progressives Congress (APC) of insensitivity to the plight of Nigerians.

“The manifest numbness of the APC leaders to bloodletting as well as the failure of the APC to proffer any tangible solution or forcefully take its government to task on security validate apprehensions on APC’s reported complicity in the worsening insecurity in our nation in the last six years. Is it not unpardonable that while the APC had failed to show empathy on the gruesome murder of scores of travelers who were burnt alive in Sokoto State, the massacre of over 15 worshippers in Niger State, other compatriots felled in Kaduna, Katsina and other parts of the country in the last few days, its leaders and officials in government had the time to attend the turbaning ceremony of President Muhammadu Buhari’s son in the same troubled Katsina state? Is it also not provocative, vexatious and indeed the height of heartlessness that APC and its leaders party while Nigeria burns?

“Such callous assault on the sensibility of Nigerians which amounts to dancing on the graves of the victims of the attacks further exposes the APC as a party that is completely unfeeling to killings, attaches no value to lives and has no commitment towards the fight against terrorism in our country,” the PDP stated.

In a related development, the PDP National Chairman, Iyorchia Ayu, said with the spate of banditry, killings and kidnappings across Nigeria, it was obvious the country is at war.

Ayu, at a meeting with journalists, in Abuja, at the weekend, said it was unfortunate that insecurity is threatening the existence of the country under the leadership of a retired general.

“We are virtually in a war situation in Nigeria today. We are fighting bandits. We are fighting kidnappers, we are fighting all sorts of bandits and extremists who are killing, raping our mothers and daughters.”