Ahmed Abubakar, Dutse
The People’s Democratic Party (PDP) North West rally scheduled to hold in Gumel was disrupted by heavily-armed policemen.
The policemen who were firing canisters of tear-gas at the crowd that had started assembling for the rally dispersed thousands of the party supporters.
Then, the angry crowd started chanting anti-APC and anti-Buhari songs, declaring that “change is imminent,” adding “we must change them.”
The state PDP Deputy Chairman, Alhaji Babandi Ibrahim, told journalists that the party faithful didn’t know what was happening until they discovered that the venue of the rally had been barricaded by the police.
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“We had officially sought for permission to hold our North West zonal rally today in Gumel only for us to see hundreds of policemen stopping us from (from exercising) our constitutional rights,” he said.
He stated that “it is the same constitution that gave the police commissioner his powers that also gave us our right for this process and nothing can stop us.”
He said that the party would definitely sue the commissioner of police if he succeeded in disrupting the rally.
When contacted, the Police Public Relations Officer of the state police command, SP Abdu Jinjiri, who confirmed the incident, however, said the command through the police commissioner would explain to the press why it took the decision to stop the event from holding.