The Peoples Democratic Party,
PDP, has warned the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, against hounding
members of the main opposition party.
The PDP specifically frowned at
the motion ex-parte filed by the Special Presidential Investigation Panel for
the Recovery of Public Property seeking the forfeiture of assets allegedly not
declared by the Deputy President of the Senate, Senator Ike Ekweremadu.
The party’s position is contained
in a statement issued by its National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan on
Thursday.
The PDP said that while it was in
full support of any genuine anti-graft war, the APC-led administration’s
obsession with Ekweremadu was another clear indication that it was not ready to
fight corruption.
The party said, “The PDP recalls
that this government rushed to arraign Senator Ekweremadu and the Senate
president, Dr. Bukola Saraki in 2016 on trumped up charges of forgery of Senate
Standing Rule, even when there was not even a mention of their names in the
contentious police report or Proof of Evidence. It eventually withdrew the
charges for lack of merit.
“The police raided and ransacked
Senator Ekweremadu’s official guest house in Abuja in May 2017 and blamed it on
false whistle blowers, whom they charged to court. Nothing has been heard about
the trial of the alleged false whistle blowers again.
“In the current matter, apart
from relying on an obsolete law to dabble into the roles of the Code of Conduct
Bureau, we are not surprised that the Panel could not carry out a thorough and
independent investigation on the purported property of the Senator, but relied
on a petition by the former Chief Judge of Enugu State, Justice Innocent
Umezulike, who is standing corruption trial in several courts, after his
removal from office by the National Judicial Council (NJC) in 2017.
“We recall that the senator accused
Umezulike and some politicians of stealing and doctoring his will, inserting
non-existent properties or properties that had nothing to do with him.
“It is also instructive that this
calculated smear campaign is in the guise of forfeiture of phantom assets came
on the heels of Senator Ekweremadu’s alarm and scathing criticism of the
APC-led administration over the nation’s deteriorating democracy and in the
midst of the ongoing executive-legislature face-off, in which a ranking senator
of the APC extraction identified Ekweremadu as a pillar of support to the
Senate President.
“This government and party have a
wet appetite for prosecution and media trial of the opposition while
investigation is on, but refuses to prosecute its members and friends indicted
by even its own presidential or ministerial panels.
“While members of the opposition
are taken to court on stretchers, the former Secretary to the Government of the
Federation, Babachir Lawal, indicted by both the Senate and a presidential
panel only got a pat on the back.
“The APC Federal Government has
failed to prosecute those involved in the Ikoyigate scandal, and the recall of
fugitive Abdulrasheed Maina, among others.
“Ekweremadu is a major symbol of
the opposition. We believe that this is part of the grand plan to strangulate
the PDP ahead of the 2019 elections and we will resist.”
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