APC alleges plan to deploy soldiers for March polls

• Seeks N’Assembly’s probe of Ekiti governorship election

• Buhari meets Catholic bishops, assures on religious freedom

OPPOSITION All Progressives Congress (APC) has asked the National Assembly to launch a probe into the role the military played in the Ekiti State election, even as it raised the alarm that the Federal Government is hatching a plot to again use the military to thwart the aspirations of Nigerians in the coming general elections.

      Addressing the media in Lagos Wednesday, National Publicity Secretary Lai Mohammed said it is regrettable that the President Goodluck Jonathan-led administration is on the verge of using the military again to thwart the aspirations of Nigerians for a change that will usher in a purposeful government.

      Mohammed posited that the National Assembly must invite everyone who featured in the secretly recorded audio tape of a meeting in Ado-Ekiti of some officials of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the Jonathan’s administration and the Brigade Commander of the 32 Artillery Brigade, Akure, on the eve of the June 21st governorship election in Ekiti State “to testify about the rigging of Ekiti poll, using the military.”

    Also, the APC Presidential Campaign Organisation (APCPCO) decried the latest call for application from youths for recruitment into the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS), describing it as a continuation of the despicable scamming of jobless youth by the government.

    The APCPCO said in a statement in Abuja that this latest attempt, being supervised by a Presidential committee, comes on the heels of the March 15, 2014 exercise, which ended in disaster across the various centres in the country.

    Meanwhile, speaking at the Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria christened “Episcopal Town Hall Conversation” with representatives of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria, the APC Presidential candidate, Major General  Muhammadu Buhari Wednesday reassured that although he had been severally and consistently vilified and maligned, he had no personal religious agenda and neither would he support any moves by anybody or group of persons to either Christianise or Islamise Nigeria.

    In his speech titled “One Nation bound in Freedom, Peace, Unity and Love”, Buhari, who was accompanied by his running mate Pastor Yemi Osinbajo, the Director General of the APC Presidential Campaign Council, Governor Rotimi Amaechi and a host of other members of the party’s PCC, stressed he “will not condone any initiative that seeks to promote one religion over the other.”

    The APC National Publicity Secretary called the attention of the Presidency and the PDP to the fact that the military is a national institution that is far too important as a symbol of our national unity to be toyed with or dragged into partisan politics, Mohammed said that the military must remember that: “its loyalty should be to the Federal Republic of Nigeria, not to any party or individual, whoever that person may be.”

  According to him, “We will like to warn, for the umpteenth time, that the military should not be used for policing duties during elections. That role should be left for the police and the Civil Defense. Is it not curious that over 1,000 troops could be made available for election duty at a time the military was battling the Boko Haram insurgency in the North East? Is it any surprise then why this battle has not achieved much in six years?”

 He added that the social media is awash with information that the military is meeting in Kaduna State with a view to working out the modalities to help the PDP at the polls, saying: “This sends the wrong signal to the polity as well as the international community about the role of the military in Nigeria’s elections

  “We want to assure Nigerians that we will ensure that this issue will not be swept under the carpet, and that those who are found to have played an ignominious role in what is now definitely a plot to rig the Ekiti election will be brought to justice. 

     Shehu said it was shocking that the input of the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) was not sought as the Comptroller-General of the NIS, Mr. David Paradang, revealed at the National Assembly hearing that, for all his years in the service, there had not been a time that the recruitment of personnel in the Inspectorate cadre was done outside the NIS.

  In other words, Shehu said, the Minister of the Interior, Mr. Abba Moro, solely supervised that botched recruitment exercise, which resulted in the death of nineteen Nigerian youths, whose only transgression was that they, trusted their country for employment.

    “Furthermore, in a desperate move to placate the victims and still make Mr. Abba Moro keep his job – for obvious political reasons – President Goodluck Jonathan promised each family of the dead victims, three automatic jobs. Meanwhile, on Tuesday, 14th October 2014, seven months after the tragic incident, there was a protest march in Benin City against the unfulfilled Presidential promise. One of the victims, Mr. Timothy Omoagbon, said that since the death of his wife, life had been unbearable.