Nigeria: APC Condemns Harassment Of El-Rufai By Security Agents

The All Progressives Congress (APC) has strongly condemned the harassment of its Deputy National Secretary, Nasir El-Rufai, by agents of the Department of State Security (DSS). The party described the agency’s storming of Mr. El-Rufai’s Abuja home earlier today as a case of shameful overkill. Armed DSS operatives had invaded the APC official’s home on Friday without producing any arrest warrant. In a statement issued in Abuja today, the APC’s interim National Publicity Secretary, Lai Mohammed, expressed shock that the DSS was seeking to arrest Mr. El-Rufai for merely exercising his constitutional right of free speech. The party stated that there was nothing inciting or out of the ordinary in the statement credited to Mr. El-Rufai. He had declared that there might be violence if the 2015 general elections were not free and fair. “What our Deputy National Secretary said is a statement of fact and should not warrant any harassment, unless of course the DSS is saying that the 2015 general elections will not be free and fair,” the APC said.

Mr. El-Rufai’s statement, according to the APC, was “a matter of cause and effect and amounts to a patriotic call for the 2015 general elections to be free, fair and credible. If this statement now rankles the DSS, then the department has a lot of explanation to do to convince Nigerians that it was not engaging in a witch-hunt, considering the case instituted by Mallam El-Rufai against it (DSS) over his illegal detention in a hotel in Awka during the Anambra governorship poll last November.” The party wondered why the DSS had suddenly found its agility, after playing dead when people like Edwin Clark, Asari Dokubo and Chukwuemeka Ezeife issued a direct threat to Nigeria's continued existence over President Goodluck Jonathan's second term ambition. […]