• APC denies involvement in Bayelsa security breach
From Femi Folaranmi, Yenagoa
Bayelsa State Governor, Seriake Dickson, has slammed the President Muhammadu Buhari-led All Progressives Congress (APC) administration of playing politics with national security.
According to him, the inability of Buhari to personally take charge of national security and engage critical stakeholders has emboldened some APC leaders to politicise national security.
Dickson, who stated this in a statement by his Chief Press Secretary, Francis Agbo, while reacting to the wind of insecurity blowing across the country, accused some APC chieftains of taking advantage of the dysfunctional federal structure and the imperfect Nigeria structure to hijack the security architecture to torment innocent citizens for their selfish ends and, by so doing, causing national insecurity.
Condemning the recent killings across the country, Dickson warned that Nigeria might cease to have a future if the Federal Government fails to, urgently, unite the Nigerians to avert the nation-wide senseless killings.
He lamented that the country is, more than ever before, too divided and unstable under the APC- led federal government
Dickson also called on President Buhari to personally handle security matters and interact with state governors to get first hand information on peculiar security situations in each state of the federation.
He alleged that in Bayelsa state, some APC leaders use the name of the president to compromise security by intimidating security agencies, stockpiling arms and ammunition, killing and ransacking communities at will.
Dickson said he had formally lodged a report with the Presidency and relevant authorities, but regretted that rather than bring the perpetrators to book, “they (perpetrators) are being shielded and provided with security.”
The statement read in part: “These APC leaders exploit the fact that Mr President is not personally involved in the handling of national security to breach national peace and security. They know that he is not in charge of the critical issues of national security because he is not personally handling them the way he should. So, they take advantage of the president’s attitude and the dysfunctional Nigeria state to intimidate and blackmail security agencies for their selfish interest and in the process, endanger the safety of lives and property of Nigerians. These APC leaders use the name of the president to sponsor criminals to unleash violence on innocent citizens. Their aim is to cause panic and force them to align with them. A case in point is in Bayelsa State, where some APC leaders hide under the protection of the federal government to stockpile arms and ammunition, to maim and kill innocent citizens, just to instil fear in them.”
Meanwhile, APC has denied involvement in a breach of security in the state.
The party said it would neither encourage nor sponsor violence in any part of Bayelsa to destabilise the state.
Chairman of the party, Joseph Fafi, in a swift reaction to the allegation by Governor Dickson, that APC members were stockpiling arms and using the name of the president to intimidate Bayelsans, said there is no truth in the allegation.
Fafi, who advised Dickson, as the Chief Security Officer of the state, to avoid utterances that would heat up the polity, challenged the governor to name APC members involved in violence or those stockpiling arms.