The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) kicked yesterday against the search of its presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar’s plane in Abuja.
Atiku, who spent the last two weeks meeting with PDP leaders in Dubai, United Arab Emirates on election strategies, returned to the country through the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja. Security men searched his jet.
In a tweet, Atiku said the search was to intimidate him.
He tweeted: “I arrived to Abuja this morning (yesterday) to a search by agents of the state, aimed at intimidating me and my staff”.
“I am committed to building a Nigeria where no citizen is intimidated by agents of state who are paid to protect them.”
In a statement, PDP spokesman Kola Ologbondiyan said the incident was carried out by a “deadly squad” in a “Gestapo style attack” on “orders from above”.
The PDP said: ”While they did not find anything incriminating on our presidential candidate, this deadly squad violently tampered with certain personal documents and gadgets belonging to him, including some of his campaign documents.”
“We invite the world to note that having failed to drag down our presidential candidate with spurious allegations and smear campaign, the APC has now resorted to state-backed violence against him and must be held responsible should any harm befall him or any member of his campaign team.
“The PDP is for peace, but we will not accept this recourse to violence, which we believe is orchestrated to directly harm our presidential candidate, foist a siege mentality on the system and set the stage for series of coordinated violence, ostensibly to truncate a peaceful conduct of the 2019 general election.
“The Buhari Presidency and the APC should bear in mind that this is an attack on our democracy and the collective sensibility of the overwhelming majority of Nigerians, across board, who have accepted the choice of Atiku Abubakar as Nigeria’s next President and they will vigorously deploy every means available in a democracy to defend him and our democratic process.
“Today, Atiku Abubakar, as a presidential candidate, has the highest demography of supporters and volunteers across our nation and we will not hesitate to call them out in defence of democracy if another such attempt is made against our candidate.
“Nigeria is not a conquered territory and anybody that wants to foist a totalitarian regime on our land will be firmly resisted
“We invite President Buhari to recall that as a presidential candidate, he had occasions to travel out of the country and the government in power never besieged or harassed him in any way. His administration should therefore not introduce such violence in our democratic space.
“The PDP counsels the APC and the Buhari Presidency to know that power belongs to God and that the time has come for Nigerians to choose a new President, for which they have collectively rallied around Atiku Abubakar and that their resort to violence, smear campaign, character assassination and rigging will not change this resolve.”