By Daniel Kanu
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on Monday urged Nigerians to use this year’s Eid-el Maulud celebration to pray for the nation and “rekindle our sense of national unity, fear of God and love for one another as compatriots while shunning all divisive and disruptive tendencies.”
The party also urged Nigerians to pray for a new direction and God’s guidance, “particularly as the nation gears up for the 2019 general election to select new sets of leaders at various levels across the country.”
The leading opposition party in a statement on Monday said Eid-el Maulud, the celebration of the birth of the Holy Prophet Mohammed, “presents to us as a nation with ample lessons in the triumph of light over darkness, good over evil, truth over falsehood, peace over strife, love over hatred, piety over depravity, mutual respect over intimidation and harassment, justice over impunity and discrimination and faith over despair.”
The party urged Nigerians to use the opportunity of Eid-el Maulud to reach out and support the needy, the sick, and the deprived, particularly victims of escalated violence and daily bloodletting in various parts of our country in the last three and half years.
In the same vein, the PDP on Monday condemned what it called attempts by President Muhammadu Buhari to politicize and compromise the country’s military.
The party accused the president of dragging in Service Chiefs to attend and participate in his re-election campaign rally.
It described the participation of the Service Chiefs in Buhari’s campaign rally tagged, “Next Level” as completely unacceptable and objectionable, insisting that it sent a very wrong signal to the public regarding the expected professionalism, neutrality and detachment of the institution of the military from partisan politics and cannot be justified under any guise.
“Such participation in partisan politics is a dangerous dimension as it will not only erode the confidence which the citizens repose on the military ahead of the election, but also a recipe for discord and partisan disagreements within the rank and file of the military, result in mutual suspicion in the force and whittle its effectiveness in defending the nation,” the party said on Monday in a statement by its national publicity secretary, Mr. Kola Ologbondiyan.
“The PDP knows that President Buhari, in the desperation to rig and foist himself on the nation in the 2019 election, will stop at nothing in his attempt to compromise and desecrate our institutions, but doing so on the military is a clear invitation to crisis and derailment of our democracy.
“The PDP insists that the state and particularly its apparatus of power must be separated from partisan politics and we caution President Buhari not to further divide the nation and set the people on collusion course with security forces, as such will spell doom for our nation.
“Finally, the PDP urges the military high command to be wary of the antics of the Buhari presidency, which is now known to be bent at compromising the Armed forces ahead of the elections and take decisive steps towards insulating its personnel and formations from political manipulation of the Buhari Presidency.
“The PDP believes in the professionalism of the Nigeria military and we insist that this must not be allowed to be eroded by President Buhari’s desperation to remain in power, even after being rejected at the polls by the people.”