The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has immediately reacted to the photo facts given by the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that director general of the main security services Lawal Daura is linked to President Muhammadu Buhari.
The PDP said Daura is a member of the APC in a newspaper cutout showing the name of the DSS DG on the list of the security directorate of president campaign organisation.
The PDP said Daura is a member of the APC in a newspaper cutout showing the name of the DSS DG on the list of the security directorate of president campaign organisation.
So also was a photo of the DG with other campaign committee members, as well as another with Buhari at the APC secretariat in Abuja, after he won the poll.
Chief Olisa Metuh, PDP spokesperson, addressed newsmen on July 30, Thursday, saying that: ”The president is at liberty to appoint anybody into any office. Using his discretion. He is the President of Nigeria. He could as well appoint his relation to NNPC, NIMASA, NPA or any other ministry that he deems fit. But there are sensitive positions that by their very nature require people who are independent, swayed away from him – people who are qualified but not tied to him by any nexus or affinity with the president.
”We insist that the president, in making those appointments, should abide by universal conventions and democratic tenets and principles. Where you have to respect by separating yourself from those issues that affects the country. These issues are on the matter of the electoral body which should be seen to be independent. It shouldn’t have anything to do with you. The same thing applied to security issues, as the sentiments and the emotions of the relation will apply in the execution of security matters and would be be-clouded by his sentiments and emotions.”
The APC in its respond has admitted that Katsina-born security expert served on the presidential campaign committee of Buhari.
However, the ruling party APC insisted that Daura is not a card-carrying member of the party.
“While it amounts to rabble-rousing and crass politicking for the PDP to have wrongly accused Mr Daura of being a member of the APC without a scintilla of credible evidence, the PDP has weakened its argument by using the pictures in which Mr Daura appeared with the President and the fact that he served in an election committee as evidence of his membership of the APC,” the party said in a statement by Lai Mohammed, its spokesperson.
“Possession of an APC membership card by Mr Daura or evidence of registration as a party member at his ward, local government or state will be the only conclusive evidence of his membership of the party. Until such an evidence is produced, we are sorry we have to tell the PDP to shut up.”
The party added: “The PDP was jittery because it was keenly aware of the kind of impunity perpetrated under the federal government it sired from 1999 to 2015.
Lawal Daura and President Muhammadu Buhari at the APC secretariat in Abuja, after he won the poll.
“PDP has forgotten the saying that he who must come to equity must come with clean hands. When Mr Mike Okiro chaired the security committee of the PDP campaign in 2011, did that prevent him from being appointed the chair of the Police Service Commission, which is responsible for issues concerning the welfare, promotion and discipline of all police personnel, in 2013?
“Did retired Col Kayode Are not become the DG of the DSS despite being a close confidante of Obasanjo during his electioneering campaign to become president? Was this not under a PDP federal government?
“In any case, even in the world’s most advance democracy, United States, was a card-carrying Democrat, Mr Leon Panetta, not named as head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) by President Barack Obama in 2009? Here in Nigeria, the APC-led FG has not even gone that far, and the PDP is blabbing.”
