Governors elected on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party have said the handcuffing of the National Publicity Secretary of their party, Olisa Metuh, was a way of ridiculing the PDP by the All Progressives Congress-led Federal Government.
The governors, operating under the aegis of the PDP Governors’ Forum, said the APC was only a step away from full blown fascism.
The governors, chaired by the Ondo State helmsman, Dr. Olusegun Mimiko, made their position known in a statement on Thursday in Abuja by the Coordinator of their Forum, Osaro Onaiwu.
They said: “The only reasonable conclusion we have reached is that the anti-corruption agencies and other institutions of state have allowed themselves to be dictated to by a single vindictive authority which takes pleasure in using power anyhow and in anyway in gross abuse of the constitution, African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and human liberty.
“The cuffing of the National Publicity Secretary of the PDP exemplifies a terrible decay of power by the APC regime which sees itself bigger than the democratic state, Nigeria, which brought it to power.
“For the avoidance of doubt, the Forum is not against the anti-corruption mantra of the present regime of President Muhammadu Buhari, but we insist it must be within the ambit of our constitution and appropriate laws.
“Any other means is a descent into fascism with its attendant consequences in the long run.”
The governors said Section 34 (1) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999, as amended, frowns at all forms of degradation of man, particularly inhuman or degrading punishment and treatment, which Metuh was subjected to.
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