Don't Muzzle Legislature, Secondus Cautions Buhari, APC *Urges respect for doctrine of separation of power

The National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Prince Uche Secondus, has warned President Muhammadu Buhari and his party,  All Progressives Congress (APC), against muzzling the legislature and the other arms of government.

Speaking against the backdrop of the obvious direct involvement of the president and his party in Tuesday's election of principal officers of the ninth Assembly, Secondus said the doctrine of separation of power must be respected and guided to avoid dictatorship.

The National Chairman, who spoke ahead of the inauguration of the ninth assembly, said in a statement from his media office signed by Ike Abonyi, that his warning had become absolutely germane given the dictatorial tendencies  of the APC administration as seen in the last four years, and their continuing propensity to disregard the rule of law and other principles of democracy.

According to the PDP chairman, intelligence at the disposal of  the party showed that the presidency and the APC had concluded plans to use intimidation and coercion against legislators not ready to do their bidding in their desperation to foist the leadership on the legislators.

Secondus revealed that the presidency and the APC have been arm-twisting the technocrats in the National Assembly to fashion out favourable rules that would enable them have their way.

He said that the apparent disregard for the basic principles of separation of power by the regime pointed clearly to their eventual destination which is dictatorship.

The PDP National Chairman said that the executive was trying to take over the 9th Assembly so as to realise their long aspiration of hijacking the legislature which began in August last year during the state-sponsored stealing of the Senate mace and the aborted illegal seizure of the eightth Assembly.

"Indications are clearly showing that full-blown dictatorship is brewing in our country

When a supposed democratic government brazenly muscles all the other arms of government, the legislature, the Judiciary and even the press, the fourth estate of the realm, we should be worried at what is loading in our polity," he said.

According to him, any government not disposed to respecting the separation of power and rule of law as enshrined in the Constitution in a democratic setting, is looking for absolute authority which is nothing but totalitarianism.

Secondus admonished the legislators in the ninth assembly to guard their independence jealously and refuse to be intimidated knowing that as elected representatives of the people, they are the bastion of democracy.