The opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has urged United States President Donald Trump to take President Muhammadu Buhari to task on constitutional and human rights violations in the country.
President Buhari, who left Nigeria yesterday for the United States to honour invitation from the American President, is scheduled to meet with Trump tomorrow.
Briefing newsmen at its Abuja secretariat, the PDP said Nigeria is on the brink, adding the present administration has completely wrecked the democratic order.
Speaking through its spokesman, Kola Ologbondiyan, the PDP said the Buhari administration has eroded constitutionally guaranteed rights of citizens while foisting a siege mentality on the people.
Ologbondiyan said: “We therefore urge President Donald Trump to stand up for democracy and take President Buhari to task on constitutional and human rights violations in Nigeria under his watch, as already detailed in the report by the US Department of State.
“Currently, there is a total collapse of respect for constitutionally guaranteed personal freedoms; there is no regard for natural course of justice, life in Nigeria is gradually returning to the state of nature and there is fear everywhere.
“Today, Nigerians are being hounded, arrested and directly detained on ‘order from above’ without warrant; citizens are locked up in dehumanising detention centres without access to medical care and legal assistance, just for holding political opinions that run contrary to the views of those in power at the centre.”
The opposition party pointed out members of the #Bring Back Our Girls group, who freely protested unmolested in 2014 and 2015 under the Goodluck Jonathan administration, are being hounded and manhandled wherever and whenever they dare to come out on a peaceful protest.
Continuing, the party said, “The recent US Government’s report on human rights violation in Nigeria also confirmed cases of harassments, persecution of opposition, arrests, detention and extra-judicial killings under President Buhari’s administration.
“Indeed, the height of human rights abuse being witnessed in our country today is the worst in our national contemporary history.”
