Nigeria: Tinubu Accuses President of Using Police to Undermine Democracy

14 January 2014

Former Lagos State Governor, Senator Bola Tinubu, yesterday condemned the police disruption of a rally by the Save Rivers Movement (SRM) in Port Harcourt, Rivers State and accused President Goodluck Jonathan of using the police and political mercenaries to undermine democracy.

Tinubu, who is also a leader of All Progressives Congress (APC), reacting to the disruption of the rally of the group, sympathetic to the state Governor, Mr. Chibuike Amaechi, on Sunday during which Senator Magnus Abe, was shot with rubber bullets and two children were reportedly killed, said the incident had added another dimension to the dangerous course charted by the Jonathan government. He accused the president of egging on the state Commissioner of Police, Mr. Joseph Mbu, to perpetrate illegalities in the state by using the police to harass and attack political opponents. The state chapter of the party also took on Mbu for saying the police used minimum force in dispersing the rally and told him to go and hide his head in shame. Tinubu, in a statement by his media aide, Mr. Sunday Dare, said: "Instead of assuring liberty and democracy, the Jonathan administration now wars against human rights and the democratic freedom of the people to select their own leaders. This represents a sad rush backwards into a past best left behind. President Jonathan seeks to forfeit our democratic future to reclaim a dictatorial past. ï€ "The people of Rivers State and of the Save Rivers Movement did nothing wrong. What the police did was criminal. The violent and direct attack on Senator Magnus Abe is a frontal assault against democracy. The Jonathan government, which is supposed to protect the public order, now constitutes threats against the very thing they have pledged to uphold. The police have been unleashed against the people and the voice of dissent like bloodhounds against a defenseless, stationary prey. "We are supposed to live in a constitutional democracy but we are burdened with a police force that has now become an agent provocateur and a tool of political repression. They are the partisan, strong-arm division of the Jonathan presidency. The police are no longer a neutral law enforcement body."

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