The Peoples Democratic Party Presidential Campaign Organisation PPCO has said it uncovered plans by the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Presidency to arrest the National Assembly members who booed President Muhammadu Buhari during his 2019 proposed budget presentation last Wednesday.
The PPCO spokesman, Buba Galadima, who addressed newsmen Sunday in Abuja, claimed that the presidency had directed security agencies to start compiling names of lawmakers who jeered Buhari for arrest.
“We learnt under an impeccable authority that some of his close aids are meeting and taking names of those supposedly booed the President. Whether to frame them, either with EFCC or ask the police to invite them. I don’t know for what purpose.
“They can’t arrest any parliamentarian for booing the President on what he thinks is correct. That the President misrepresented what has happened in his or her constituency. They should be careful with what they are trying to do, because what they are planning to do, whether the President knows or he doesn’t know, will affect the 2019 general elections.
“He has no authority whatsoever, or his agents whether EFCC, ICPC, Police and DSS to accost any parliamentarian for having booed the President that read out on the floor of the National Assembly,” he said.
Galadima also declared that “90% of the President’s claim in the budget were false, claiming that his reliance on false figures and facts in that budget proposal presentation has called his integrity to question.
“What the President read out as achievements were absolute falsehood, they were absolute misrepresentation of facts. By now, we must have seen that 90% of what he called achievement were rarely not true.
“It is unfortunate that the President of Federal Republic of Nigeria is a person that cannot check his facts. He has no ways of finding out what is the truth. Whatever is given to him by his subordinate, the President hook and sinker takes it and rolls it out to the public.This is called his integrity to question.
“Therefore it is not out of place for members of the national assembly and for all of you to know that there is a parliamentary immunity. That if members are within that hallow chamber, they can say anything and it will not offend any law. Infact they cannot even be try in the court of law for what they say in the National Assembly Chambers.”
The PDP spokesman also accused the President of breaching the Electoral Act by collecting donations from the Nigerian Farmers Association for the purpose of campaign.
