All Progressives Congress (APC) has described the police invasion of the National Assembly last week as the equivalent of a coup and called for an independent enquiry to determine who ordered the invasion and for what purpose.
The party said the call was to prevent a recurrence and punish to those behind it.
In a statement issued in Lagos yesterday by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party said using weapons to attack an arm of government and preventing it from carrying out its functions were tantamount to a coup, adding that the teargas that was fired into the National Assembly by policemen was a chemical weapon.
‘’We are demanding the independent enquiry in view of the seriousness of the armed attack on the National Assembly and the danger it poses to our democracy. We are also alerting the international community to the happenings in Nigeria and urging them to show interest because of their investment in the country’s democracy,’’ it stated.
The APC said the tepid denial by the Presidency of its involvement in the senseless attack was not enough to stop the finger pointing at it (presidency), especially because no one had the temerity to stop the nation’s number four citizen from entering the National Assembly without an express order from the president.
‘’This is why we have continuously held the president responsible for last week’s show of shame,’’ the party said, noting that the inspector general of police was just a tool in the hands of a president.
‘’We make bold to say that President Jonathan has worked assiduously to put Nigeria’s democracy in jeopardy, whether in Rivers State, where he backed a misguided police commissioner to usurp the constitutional duties of an elected governor, or in Ekiti State where he has so far refused to condemn the so-called impeachment of the speaker by seven Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) members in a 26-member House of Assembly.
‘’Also, apart from the half-hearted and belated denial, the president has not condemned the attack on the National Assembly by the police. A president that is conversant with the dictates of the constitution, which he swore an oath to protect, would have gone ahead to make a national broadcast to condemn the police invasion of the Assembly and even promise to get to the root of the matter.
“Instead, our president has maintained an undignified silence in the face of the global outcry that has greeted the orchestrated police action,’’ the APC stated.
It advised President Jonathan to stop behaving as if he wanted to be the last president of a united Nigeria and to immediately put an end to actions that were inimical to the survival of the country’s democracy.
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