APC alleges FG plans to intimidate opposition ahead of 2015 polls

The All Progressives Congress (APC) has raised the alarm over alleged plan by the Federal Government to use the security agencies, especially the Department of State Security Service (DSS) and the Police to harass the opposition in the 2015 elections.

In a statement issued in Abuja on Wednesday by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party said the threats being issued recently by the Minister of Police Affairs and the DSS, over alleged inflammatory statements by opposition leaders, is nothing but a thinly-veiled attempt at cowing the opposition and destabilizing its ranks.

It said the strategy includes the ‘invitation’ of key opposition figures for questioning by the DSS, starting with the APC National Publicity Secretary, to be followed by arrests and detention of such figures.

The APC said the impending clampdown is the PDP-led Federal Government’s answer to the soaring profile of the opposition ahead of the polls.

It called on local and international observers of the elections to keep a close eye on the “unsavoury developments, which constitute a clear and present danger to the success of the elections.

“The Minister of Police Affairs said publicly that he has already directed the Inspector-General of Police as well as the DSS to arrest anyone who makes inflammatory statements ahead of the 2015 elections, and then went ahead to castigate the APC, thus exposing the real reason for his directive.”

‎The statement further said: “The Minister had barely issued his orders when the DSS, which has unabashedly become a megaphone of the ruling PDP, fired its own warning, directed pointedly at ”a serving governor calling on men of the armed forces to rise up in protest against constituted authority,” when nothing of such happened.

”If the Minister and indeed the security agencies were carrying out their duties as an official/agents of state rather than partisans, they would have realized that no one is more guilty of making inflammatory and even treasonable statements than the supporters of the President and members of the PDP.”