Dr. Yunusa Tanko, the LP’s Presidential Campaign Council spokesman, announced that the party will host its rally tomorrow in Lafia, Nasarawa State.
Tanko encouraged security authorities to carry out their duties in light of the terror alert issued by the US and the UK, contending that the council was unable to postpone the event since it had already mobilized both human and material resources to the campaign’s location.
He said: “We appreciate the position of the learned professor. Interestingly, we have also observed such but at the moment we have already deployed people on the ground with the hope that the security authorities will do their job to ensure security during our campaign that we will start on Saturday (tomorrow).
“At the moment there is no official statement for us to call off the campaign because we have mobilised material and human resources with the hope that security agencies will do their job.”
‘Suspending campaigns means surrendering to terrorists’
The call was rejected by senior statesman and National Chairman of the Afenifere Renewal Group (ARG), Mr. Olawale Oshun.
The Federal Government must, according to him, take the security warning seriously, and that is the most important thing.
Oshun said: “This is because they have had greater experience than us with regards to gathering intelligence reports. They’ve always had more effective technology in gathering security reports.
“So, the first thing is for the Federal Government to put in place elaborate pre-emptive measures because when you listen to the Minister of Information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, you want to believe that something is wrong somewhere in governance. This warning is coming because they have seen something that may have eluded us. So, we must take it seriously.
“The thing is that we have a system that can be very effective when we want it to be effective. Thus, we must take preventive measures, so that the prediction will not come true.
“But, I will not subscribe to the idea of suspending the ongoing electioneering campaign. This is for the simple reason that every nation must live by its own tenet. Once we suspend the campaign as a result of the security warning, it will affect practically everything, because it will also mean that there should be no schooling, no going to the market and so on. You cannot say people should not earn their livelihood.”
Political parties suspending campaigns due to the security warning in the nation, according to former National Chairman of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), Chief Chekwas Okorie, will amount to the country giving in to terrorist threats.
However, Okorie suggested that the federal government take a more proactive approach to managing the problem by working with the nations who issued the notice to combat the threat.
