The senator representing Kogi West senatorial district, Dino Melaye and the spokesperson of the APC Presidential Campaign Council, Festus Keyamo (SAN), on Tuesday, were involved in a heated exchange over President Buhari’s directive on ballot box snatchers.
They were both guests on Channels TV’s special election programme, The Verdict.
The President had warned “anybody who thinks he has enough influence in his locality to lead a body of thugs to snatch boxes or to disturb the voting system, he will do it at the expense of his own life”.
Defending Buhari’s utterance, Keyamo said the President’s directive serves as a deterrence to the menace of electoral fraud
But Melaye insisted that the President had failed to speak with utmost decorum and respect to the rule of law as he was inciting violence.
Senator Melaye said he was “utterly disappointed” in the President, adding that he was even more surprised that he had not tendered an apology to Nigerians.
“I am utterly disappointed in my president. I am completely in shock that in a democratic setting, a president will speak with the anointing if Idi Amin of Uganda, the president will use the word “ruthless”, the president will order killings of Nigerians without going through legal procedures. That is totally unacceptable.
“I expected that by now the President should have apologised to Nigerians and withdraw that statement but instead there has been a lot of efforts, boxing the wind by Chieftains of the APC, trying to defend what is not defendable,” he said.
However, Keyamo said the President was in line constitutionally, by making the comments and he would even encourage him to repeat it.
“I think I have listened to so many uninformed comments.
“What the president said is 100% correct, defensible and I will urge him to repeat it over and over again.
“The President said that whoever leads a band of thugs to go and snatch ballot boxes will pay dearly for it with his life. That is a correct statement of the law,” he stressed.
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