Kola Ologbondiyan speaking to journalists
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has decribed the asset seizure Executive Order signed by President Muhammadu Buhari as illegal and reprehensible.
The opposition added that the order is in total disregard to the provisions of 1999 constitution.
In signing the order on Thursday, Buhari had posited that it was necessary to preserve assets of politicians undergoing corruption trials from dissipation, using proceeds of their illicit activities which can otherwise be employed to allure, pervert and/or intimidate the investigative and judicial processes and other forms.
Iin a statement issued by its National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, in Abuja on Friday, the PDP alerted that the Nigerian constitution does not, under any section, confer such powers on the President under democracy.
Therefore, according to the PDP, the order seeks to hijack powers of both the legislature and the courts and vest it on the President so that he can use same at will, as a political instrument, to haunt, traumatise, harass and victimise perceived political opponents.”
The party said; “Mr President wants to change our democratic governance to a military regime, in line with his lamentation, two days ago, that the fight against corruption will be better under a military regime than under a democracy.
“It is instructive to emphasise that the PDP is not in anyway opposed to the fight against corruption. Rather, the party holds that the imposition of this Executive Order, which is radically at variance with the provisions of the constitution, is totally unacceptable.
“PDP takes this Executive Order 6 of 2018 as a reenactment of the obnoxious Decree 2 of 1984, which incidentally was also an enactment under then military Head of State, General Muhammadu Buhari, and this must not be permitted in our current democratic dispensation.”