Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has said that President Muhammadu Buhari’s private trip out of the country without transmitting power, as required by the constitution, is an act of dereliction.
Buhari left for the UK last Thursday on a 10-day private visit.
PDP, in a statement on Monday by its spokesperson, Kola Ologbondiyan, said the president’s action confirms that All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Presidency are not interested in following constitutional guidelines but in foisting authoritarianism.
Part of the statement read: “What else, beside an authoritarian propensity, can explain why the Buhari Presidency relegated our Constitutional Order by declaring the application of Section 145 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) which directs that the President transmits power whenever he is travelling out of the country on vacation, as a mere ‘convention.’
“Authoritarian tendencies are usually characterized by absolute lack of trust on other government functionaries, which could likely explain the failure to transmit power to the Vice President. Such proclivity can also lead to a sequestering of institutions of government, if not checked.
“Such dereliction at the high levels emboldens bandits, bolsters insurgents and fuels cruel acts such as extra-judicial killing, illegal arrests, detention of innocent citizens, constitutional violations, attack on institutions of democracy as well as reckless looting of our national treasury by members of the cabal because they know that ‘nothing will happen.’”
PDP also urged “Nigerians to unite in condemning this act of impunity in the interest of our nation even as they earnestly await the retrieval of the stolen Presidential mandate at the tribunal.”
