The National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party, Uche Secondus has expressed the party’s disappointment with the response of President Muhammadu Buhari’s regime to the #Endsars protests which turned violent over the last few days.
Secondus who spoke at a media briefing at the PDP National Secretariat, in Abuja, on Thursday, said the situation at hand was not one any reasonable Nigerian irrespective of political or religious affiliation should play politics with.
According to him, for nearly two weeks, Nigerian youths have been demonstrating peacefully calling for an end to police brutality as mirrored by a unit of the Nigeria Police force called the Special Anti-Robbery Squad commonly referred to as SARS.
Secondus further said “They (protesters) have been carrying out this constitutional obligation peacefully across the country without any molestation and registering their grievances appropriately to relevant authorities.
“PDP finds the injection of violence into the peaceful protest as unacceptable as it paved the way for the deployment of the military to murder innocent harmless Nigeria youths
“This was callously done on Tuesday night at the Lekki tollgate in Lagos where some group of armed uniformed soldiers of the Nigeria Army opened fire on protesting youths killing and maiming several of them.
“PDP stands shoulder to shoulder with all the victims of this brutal attitude and condemns in the strongest terms. We also urge the protesting youths to ensure that they continue to be peaceful even in the face of provocations.
“We therefore wish to state unequivocally that the President has an honourable option in the face of the glaring incompetence in governance to declare a national emergency in the nation’s security architecture.
“We also request for the immediate setting up of an independent judicial panel to look into the handling of this peaceful protest especially as it relates to the role of security agencies.”