By Nasir Kura
The Coalition for Nigeria Movement has lambasted the Federal Government for imposing a travel ban on 50 politically-exposed persons, under its Executive Order 6.
The CNM, backed by ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo, said this in a statement by its Director, Strategic Communications, Akin Osuntokun, on Sunday.
According to the coalition, the ban, was a subversion of the rule of law, reminiscent of military decrees.
The CNM also described the new executive order as an attempt to muzzle the opposition.
It said the executive order was in line with Buhari’s speech which he made at the Annual General Conference of the Nigerian Bar Association, wherein the President said rule of law must be subject to national interest.
The CNM said Buhari had been planning to use security agencies to achieve a hidden agenda hence his decision to compromise the nation’s security architecture.
The statement read in part, “Recall that journalists were jailed on account of a similar decree that criminalised any reporting that embarrassed his government. Against this background, what the Executive Order 6 portends is a significant step towards the creation of a police state.
“It is also against this background that the personalisation of the national security architecture makes sense. Otherwise there would have been no need to continue to reinforce the lopsided and parochial subversion and subordination of the security agencies to a personality cult agenda, at every available opportunity.
“This has been the underlying agenda of Buhari momentarily provoked into a panic mode by the emergence of Alhaji Atiku Abubakar as the Presidential candidate of the PDP and the accelerating national consensus against his re-election.”
