Fred Itua, Abuja
Senators elected on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), have expressed doubts over the ability of security agents to protect members of the opposition during the 2023 general elections.
They said the violence that characterised Kogi and Bayelsa gubernatorial elections was a pointer to what lies ahead in 2023 when the country return to the poll.
Minority Leader of the Senate, Enyinnaya Abaribe, while briefing newsmen in Abuja, also called on the Inspector-General of Police to fish out culprits who burnt a PDP woman leader to death in Kogi State.
He said the impunity that greeted the polls showed that the will of the people was suppressed in favour of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
He said: “We totally reject the pronouncement after the elections made by the INEC and we are very worried about the trend of what happened during those elections.
“The outright intimidation, the killings of Nigerian citizens all in the name of some people to be able to win an election and more so, the connivance of the security agencies with the different groupings of the APC to perpetuate a heist on Nigerians.
“We know that the results that were announced weren’t a true reflection of what happened in the field.
“We are much more concerned with the fact that it seems that all the gains made by the PDP in all our period of democracy starting in 1999 seems to have been eroded by what happened from the elections starting with Osun, culminating in last weekend’s elections.
“But we are further pained by the fact that the PDP Woman Leader, Mrs Salome Abuh after the declaration of results and the purported winning of the governor of Kogi state, APC hoodlums still chased her to her house, poured petrol on her and hacked her and burnt her to death, in the clear view of security agents.
“For the mere fact that she is an opposition leader and a woman at that.
Our problem isn’t the fact that people can seek to vie for election but our problem is that if you are in opposition and you are singled out to be murdered, then it tells us that what we are going to see coming will be very, very dangerous for Nigerians, if this isn’t curbed immediately and now.”