The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), led by Kabiru Turaki, has defended comments made by Seyi Makinde, governor of Oyo, at the opposition parties’ summit in Ibadan.
Speaking at the national summit of All Opposition Political
Party Leaders on Saturday, Makinde said Nigeria’s democracy is at risk due to
the alleged weakening of opposition parties.
“For those who are carrying on as if there is no tomorrow.
They should remember that ‘Operation Wetie’ started from here. This is the same
Wild Wild West,” Makinde said.
“Operation Wetie” refers to a period of intense political
violence that engulfed Nigeria’s western region, particularly Ibadan, in the
mid-1960s.
The phrase, derived from a Yoruba expression meaning “wet
him”, describes a tactic in which political opponents, their homes and vehicles
were doused with petrol and set ablaze.
The crisis erupted after the highly disputed 1965 Western
Region elections, which were widely alleged to have been rigged in favour of
the ruling faction, effectively sidelining the opposition.
But in a statement issued on Sunday, Felix Morka, national
publicity secretary of the All Progressives Congress (APC), condemned Makinde’s
remarks, describing them as “reckless” and a threat to national peace and
security.
Morka called on security and intelligence agencies to take
the matter seriously and act to protect lives and property, adding that
constitutional immunity does not shield public officials from accountability
over statements deemed to threaten national security.
‘IT WAS A CAUTION AGAINST TOTALITARIANISM’
In a statement, Ini Ememobong, spokesperson of the Turaki
faction, said Makinde’s remark was not a call to violence but a “historical
caution” intended to warn against the consequences of political repression.
“The use of history in the way and manner done by Governor
Makinde in the said speech served as a caution and advisory to the Federal
Government, the APC, and other national institutions, of the unmitigated crisis
that their actions and inactions can result in,” the statement reads.
“Only a guilty aggressor can interpret it to mean a threat
or call to violence. It is common knowledge that those who do not learn from
history are doomed by it.
“Governor Makinde offered a sobering reminder that when
insatiable political greed and avarice replace patriotism and good governance,
and are compounded by the accumulated anger and frustrations of the citizenry,
the resultant conflagration will be of immeasurable proportion. This again is a
fact that history bears witness to.
“The events that led to the sad incident of ‘wetie’ and the
current happenings within the political space, as orchestrated by the APC, are
not just similar but identical in both intent and execution. To continue doing
the same thing while expecting a different result is the very definition of
political recklessness.
“When pushed to the wall, people have no other direction to
go but forward, against the wall itself. The current slide into elected
totalitarianism has been entirely engineered by the APC and the Federal
Government. They cannot decry the effect while remaining willfully blind to the
cause and to their own culpability in it.”
Ememobong said the APC lacks the moral authority to
criticise Makinde’s remark, adding that the party behaved worse when it was in
opposition.
“When the APC was in opposition, they did not merely
threaten violence; they openly promised to make the country ungovernable, with
the infamous baboon and blood narrative,” he said.
“They therefore lack any moral capacity to complain about a
mere historical recollection by a sitting governor. As long as the targeted
state-sponsored decimation of the opposition continues, the opposition parties
will explore increasingly potent strategies, entirely within the ambit of the
law, to prevent the enthronement of a one-party state under an elected
dictator.
“The APC should be ashamed of their comprehensive failure in
both governance and politics, and their resort to the crude tactics of
inducement, intimidation and persecution of opposition leaders.”
Ememobong said the PDP would hold the federal government,
the APC, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), and other
democratic institutions responsible for any breakdown of law and order in the
build-up to the 2027 elections.
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