Labour Party replies DSS over Interim Govt alert, says agency can’t intimidate Nigerians

…for seeking redress in court over election infractions

*As Yunusa Tanko questions Agency’s silence to ‘MC Olu-Omo’ and co’s ethnic profiling, violence against voters

By KEMI KASUMU

The Labour Party (LP) has replied to the alert Wednesday by the Department of State Service (DSS), in which it claimed that some political actors were plotting to install Interim National Government (ING).

This, the DSS said, is to derail President Muhammadu Buhari’s handing over of government to President-elect produced from the February 25, 2023 presidential election in the country, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

The Service had warned that political actors involved in the plot had been identified.

But the Labour Party, in a swift reaction to the alert, said the party and Nigerians were unfazed and cannot be intimidated by the warnings of the DSS.

It said it was confident that Nigerians would not be intimidated into abandoning their legitimate and legal right to seek judiciall redress to reclaim their mandate which, it said, was freely given to its presidential candidate, Peter Obi, but was brazenly stolen.

Chief Spokesperson of the Labour Party, Dr Yunusa Tanko, said this while responding to the alarm by the Department of State Services, in Abuja, on Wednesday.

Dr. Yunusa Tanko said the DSS had failed Nigerians in implementing its role, as an agent of justice, considering its silence to what he described as MC Olu-Omo and his co-travellers’ ethnic profiling and violence against Labour Party’s supporters and other Nigerian voters during the elections, especially in Lagos.

Dr. Tanko, the LP’s spokesman, urged the DSS to step up its game by addressing the numerous anomalies during the presidential polls.

Yunusa said, “We are certain that Nigerians who want to take back their country will not be intimidated or blackmailed into abandoning a legitimate course.

“As a party, we have submitted ourselves to pursuing the course of justice through constitutional means, it will not serve as the interest of democracy collapses in Nigeria.

“We will like to ask, where was the DSS when our members and other Nigerians were being attacked, maimed and killed especially in Lagos?

“Where was the DSS when MC Oluomo and his ilk were engaged in ethnic profiling and violence against Nigerians of a certain ethnic nationality over their democratic choices?

“We needed the DSS to step up its game then but it failed. If it had done what it was supposed to, our nation would have been better for it.

“Now that Nigerians have decided to follow laid down democratic procedures of drawing attention to injustice warnings and threats are being issued.

“The DSS ought to have issued these warnings from the beginning to show Nigerians that this country belongs to all of us and not the personal fiefdom of an individual or a group.

“We urge the DSS to send these words of caution to those bigots who are pushing this country to the brink of disaster with their utterances and violent conduct against other peace-loving Nigerians who do not subscribe to their political views or speak their language.”