A northern-based pro-democracy activist, Mallam Shehu Sani, said on Monday in Kaduna that the security operatives’ siege to the National Assembly last week demonstrated the degree of desperation and abuse of power by the President Goodluck Jonathan-led government.
Sani, who is the President of the Civil Rights Congress of Nigeria, also condemned an alleged “assault” on the secretariat of the All Progressives Congress in Lagos by soldiers and the Department of State Security.
He said the actions pointed to “visible symptoms of tyranny and a retrogressive slide to totalitarianism by the Jonathan government.”
He said the Jonathan presidency was becoming allergic to democratic values and culture of freedom, noting that the increasing resistance to the rule of law by the Federal Government as well as alleged criminal trespass on the fundamental rights of Nigerians by security agents symbolised “a dark cloud of authoritarianism hanging over the nation.”
Sani, who was jailed by the late dictator, Gen. Sani Abacha, over a phantom coup allegation in 1995, said, “The assault on the National Assembly was a political sacrilege and a desecration of such an important democratic institution.
“The raid demonstrates the degree of desperation and abuse of power by the Jonathan-led government in his rabid bid to succeed himself.
“Since 1999, no government has so brazenly and criminally used, misused and abused the state apparatus like the existing one.
“We fought bitterly to restore democratic rule in Nigeria; we went to prison to restore democratic rule in Nigeria.”
On the alleged assault on the APC, Sani said, “The assault on the APC secretariat in Lagos also stands unreservedly condemned.
“The police, the army and the ex-militants’ votes alone cannot re-elect the incumbent government.”