#EndSARS – PDP Backs UK Parliament’s Threat of Sanctions
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) yesterday applauded the resolution by the British Parliament to impose travel restriction and visa ban to officials of the President Muhammadu Buhari-led All Progressives Congress (APC) administration involved in the violation of human rights, including the shooting and killing of unarmed and peaceful protesters in Nigeria.
The PDP, however, urged the United Nations and other international bodies to immediately list indicted officials of the President Buhari’s government for the widespread crime against humanity going on in the country in the last five years.
According to a statement issued by the National Publicity Secretary of the PDP, Kola Ologbondiyan, “Our party also urges the British Government to extend the proposed sanctions to include the freezing of assets and funds belonging to such officials and their families in the United Kingdom.
“We also call on other countries, including United States, France, the United Arab Emirates, South Africa, among others, to impose similar sanctions against indicted officials of the Buhari administration for human rights violations and crime against humanity.
“Such sanctions should also be imposed on officials indicted for undermining our democracy and electoral system.”
The PDP said the international community must call out President Buhari, as the buck stops on his table, as the commander-in-chief, under whose watch human rights violations, including arbitrary arrests and detention in dehumanising facilities, widespread extrajudicial killings, sudden disappearances of dissenting voices, disregard to rule of law, disobedience to court orders and foisting of siege mentality on the citizenry have become the order of the day.
“Is it not equally frightening that the government has also failed to explain how armed thugs were seen being brought in security vans to unleash violence on demonstrators in Abuja and other parts of our country?
“Rather than providing answers to these troubling questions, the federal government is desperate to gag Nigerians, muzzle the media, shut down the social media and even threatening the international media, including CNN, for carrying out an investigative report on the Lekki killing, while its officials continue to make contradicting claims on the matter.”
Moreover, the PDP said the administration had turned a deaf ear to the demand for an independent National Truth Commission on the killings, adding that such stance only points to desperation for a huge cover up in the face of demand for answers by Nigerians and the international community.
