Lekki shootings: PDP backs UK parliament inquest
From Ezeocha Nzeh, Abuja
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has asked the United Kingdom Parliament to move for the prosecution of key members of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration for crimes against humanity following the shooting of armless protesters at Lekki tollgate on the 20th of October, 2020.
The party further urged 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.
The party further 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 demonstrators in our country.
The PDP in a statement on Wednesday by its Spokesperson, Kola Ologbondiyan, urged the United Nations and other international bodies to immediately list indicted officials of President Muhammadu Buhari’s government for crime against humanity due to the abuses going on in the country in the last five years.
The party also called on other countries, including United States, France, the United Arab Emirates, South Africa to impose similar sanctions against indicted officials of the Buhari administration for human rights violations and crime against humanity.
“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 dehumanizing 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.
“Indeed, the manifest use of brute force, including the deployment of the military with live ammunition, in addition to recruiting of armed thugs to attack and kill innocent Nigerian youths, who were in peaceful demonstration against widespread police brutality and other systemic injustices, underscores the horrible situation in Nigeria under President Buhari as detailed in earlier reports by Amnesty International and US Department of State among other international bodies” PDP stated.
The party faulted the federal government for the deployment of troops to Lekki Toll Gate in Lagos, where unarmed demonstrators were shot and killed while waving the national flag and singing the nation’s anthem.”
