TheCable

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has accused President Muhammadu Buhari of abandoning governance in the guise of a private trip to the UK.

The party said the president’s decision to travel to the UK without informing the national assembly suggests he and the All Progressives Congress (APC) are seeking to vacate the 1999 constitution.

Buhari’s decision to embark on a ten-day “private trip” to the UK without first writing the national assembly has been condemned by some Nigerians who described it as illegal.

But his aides defended his action, insisting it was not necessary for the president to write the lawmakers about the trip.

However, in the statement issued by Kola Ologbondiyan, PDP spokesman, the opposition party said the president’s action is “an act of dereliction, which confirms that the APC and the Buhari Presidency are not interested in governance.”

“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,” read the statement issued on Monday.

“Moreover, Mr. President’s abandoning of governance, particularly at this critical time when our nation is facing grave security and economic challenges, signposts the level of impunity and recklessness that will characterize our nation in the next four years, if the stolen Presidential mandate is not retrieved from the APC.”

The PDP said Buhari’s action has caused the “absence of a constitutional command structure” which leaves Nigeria “at the mercy of the extremely corrupt and vicious cabal with whom President Buhari presided over the most corrupt and most incompetent administration.”

It also said the action has exposed the nation to unabated banditry, extra-judicial killings, illegal arrests and looting of the national treasury.

“The PDP therefore urges 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,” the party said.