Buhari ceding Nigeria to Daura, DSS boss, Ijaw youths allege

Buhari ceding Nigeria to Daura, DSS boss, Ijaw youths allege

Ijaw youths under the Delta Ijaw Youth Assembly, DIYA,  on Wednesday accused the president of handing over the running of the country to his kinsman, Mr Musa Lawal Daura, the Director-General of the Department of State Service.
 
In a fiery statement by Ebimobowei Oguma, President of the group, they youths accused the president of breaching the rule of law in his avowed fight against corruption, advising that no democratic government would survive by breaking the law.
 
Specifically, the youths faulted Buhari over what seems like the unleashing of Nigeria’s secret police on the Ijaw people who served in the last administration, especially Mr. Patrick Akpobolokemi, who was reportedly manhandled by officials of the DSS yesterday.
 
‘’Monday’s manhandling and dehumanization of Mr Patrick Akpobolokemi did not come as a surprise to us. The whole world saw yesterday how a law abiding citizen was ambushed in the temple of justice ,  beaten and driven off like a terrorist.
 
‘’The facts of the matter are a direct slap on justice. The EFCC had filed 52 count charges in two separate cases against Mr Akpobolokemi before two judges of the Federal High Court Lagos. Both judges granted bail with difficult conditions. Mr Akpolobokemi struggled to meet them.
 
‘’The EFCC’s grouse seems to be with the bails. But because it’s standing on very flimsy grounds, it’s resorting to such brutal self help measures’’, they stated.
 
According to the group,  one Mr Oyedipo Rotimi, a lawyer and EFCC operative repeatedly slapped Mr Akpobolokemi, reminding him that he ( Rotimi) “is the law”.
 
The group maintained that the crooked maritime interests that Akpobolokemi  fought when he was the NIMASA boss were the ones goading Rotimi, the EFCC official.
 
 They vowed to expose ‘all of the thieves’ that the last management of NIMASA under Akpobolokemi put out of business, who are now fighting him fiercely.
 
On the actions of the DSS in recent times, the youths described the security agency as ‘lawless’, and accused the president of turning a blind eye to the various breaches of the law in the last few months.
 
‘’President Muhammadu Buhari seems to have handed over the proper running of Nigeria to his kinsman, Musa Lawal Daura, Director General of the DSS. What Daura has succeeded in doing is to infuse a culture of lawlessness on all law enforcement agencies.
 
‘’Why the president is blind to the harm these elements are causing our nascent democracy beats us. Or  is he simply overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of our country’s problem not to notice?. But Mr President should know this: there is a zero survival chance for an elected government outside the ambits of the rule of law.
 
‘’ Rule of law and rule of man are not substitutable. For every act of misgovernance, it’s President Buhari’s government that is discredited. Hard as he tries, Daura and his co-travellers are just hirelings’’, they posited.
 
While imploring President Buhari to run the affairs of Nigeria with the fear of God, the group advised him to borrow a leaf from ex-President Goodluck Jonathan, who because of his respect for democratic values, made the historic concessional phone call even before the final votes were counted.
 
‘’ To then proceed to want to run a country as a conquered territory beats us. President Buhari seems to have declared war on all friends and associates of former President Jonathan, particularly his kinsmen, outside the rule of law. We have never been conquered and we won’t to surrender to nobody, at least not our generation’’, they said
 
The Ijaw youths implored all Nigerians to stand up for what is right and defend what justice has provided for all, noting that a war against corruption, genuinely pursued, has beneficial consequences for the country.
 
However, they advised that the war ‘’must be safely moored to the rule of law and must be blind to ethnic groupings and party affiliations as currently being pursued by the current government under President Buhari’’.  ‘’No Nigerian deserves the tyranny of government’’, they noted.
 
The group concluded that, ‘’any government that cannot engage with the people of the Niger Delta, but picks on the flotsams of our society, as the APC government did in the Bayelsa gubernatorial contest  or as they are shamelessly recruiting in Delta State needs a proper audit of its moral compass’’