By ONYEKACHI EZE, Abuja

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) said the All Progressives Congress (APC) should take responsibility for the failures of President Muhammadu Buhari in the area of security.

PDP, in a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, urged President Buhari to learn from Presidents Idris Derby of Chad and Donald Trump of America on how to protect and guarantee the safety of Nigerian citizens.

The party accused the APC of politicising the failure of the Buhari administration to stem the tide of insecurity, particularly in the northern parts of the country.

According to the PDP, it is embarrassing to the country for foreign militaries to take over its soil, despite the promises APC made to Nigerians in 2015 for their safety and well-being.

“It is indeed unpardonable that the APC, which, during the 2015 election campaign, promised to promptly end insurgency, upon which it was handed the rein of power, is now shamelessly seeking to divert public attention from the worsened banditry, insurgency and unbridled ravaging of our citizens under President Buhari’s watch.

“Is it not the worst form of leadership failure that President Buhari, a general, who promised to lead from the front in the fight against insurgency, had rather taken a back seat in the comfort and luxury of Aso Presidential Villa, leaving Nigerians to the mercy of bandits, terrorists, kidnappers and to languish in detention camps in various parts of the country?

“It is clear that PDP’s statement on the rescue operation on our soil by the United States as well as similar earlier operation performed by Chad was a patriotic call in the overall national interest.

“If anything, the silence by the Buhari presidency on this sticking embarrassment tends to indicate its acceptance of PDP’s position that it can neither secure the territorial integrity of our nation nor arrest the wave of insecurity ravaging our country,” PDP stated.

But the ruling APC said it won’t be dragged into an exchange with the PDP in its plot to gain selfish and insensitive political capital from issues of national security. “As with the case of Saturday’s rescue of a kidnapped American citizen in Nigeria by U.S. special forces, combating terrorism and other emerging cross border crimes require international collaborations and assistance when necessary.

“We don’t expect the PDP to understand this international best practice going by its evil penchant of diverting and sharing counter-insurgency funds to its political cronies and its criminal and negligent handling of the 2014 abduction of 276 Chibok schoolgirls while claiming a grand political conspiracy against it.

“Unlike previous PDP governments, the President Buhari-led APC government is not “sleeping on the wheel” on serious national concerns,” Yekini Nabena, Deputy National Publicity Secretary of APC stated in a statement. (New Telegraph)

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