The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), led by Kabiru Turaki, has defended comments made by Seyi Makinde, governor of Oyo, at the opposition parties’ summit in Ibadan.
Speaking at the national summit of All Opposition Political Party Leaders on Saturday, Makinde said Nigeria’s democracy is at risk due to the alleged weakening of opposition parties.
“For those who are carrying on as if there is no tomorrow. They should remember that ‘Operation Wetie’ started from here. This is the same Wild Wild West,” Makinde said.
“Operation Wetie” refers to a period of intense political violence that engulfed Nigeria’s western region, particularly Ibadan, in the mid-1960s.
The phrase, derived from a Yoruba expression meaning “wet him”, describes a tactic in which political opponents, their homes and vehicles were doused with petrol and set ablaze.
The crisis erupted after the highly disputed 1965 Western Region elections, which were widely alleged to have been rigged in favour of the ruling faction, effectively sidelining the opposition.
But in a statement issued on Sunday, Felix Morka, national publicity secretary of the All Progressives Congress (APC), condemned Makinde’s remarks, describing them as “reckless” and a threat to national peace and security.
Morka called on security and intelligence agencies to take the matter seriously and act to protect lives and property, adding that constitutional immunity does not shield public officials from accountability over statements deemed to threaten national security.
‘IT WAS A CAUTION AGAINST TOTALITARIANISM’
In a statement, Ini Ememobong, spokesperson of the Turaki faction, said Makinde’s remark was not a call to violence but a “historical caution” intended to warn against the consequences of political repression.
“The use of history in the way and manner done by Governor Makinde in the said speech served as a caution and advisory to the Federal Government, the APC, and other national institutions, of the unmitigated crisis that their actions and inactions can result in,” the statement reads.
“Only a guilty aggressor can interpret it to mean a threat or call to violence. It is common knowledge that those who do not learn from history are doomed by it.
“Governor Makinde offered a sobering reminder that when insatiable political greed and avarice replace patriotism and good governance, and are compounded by the accumulated anger and frustrations of the citizenry, the resultant conflagration will be of immeasurable proportion. This again is a fact that history bears witness to.
“The events that led to the sad incident of ‘wetie’ and the current happenings within the political space, as orchestrated by the APC, are not just similar but identical in both intent and execution. To continue doing the same thing while expecting a different result is the very definition of political recklessness.
“When pushed to the wall, people have no other direction to go but forward, against the wall itself. The current slide into elected totalitarianism has been entirely engineered by the APC and the Federal Government. They cannot decry the effect while remaining willfully blind to the cause and to their own culpability in it.”
Ememobong said the APC lacks the moral authority to criticise Makinde’s remark, adding that the party behaved worse when it was in opposition.
“When the APC was in opposition, they did not merely threaten violence; they openly promised to make the country ungovernable, with the infamous baboon and blood narrative,” he said.
“They therefore lack any moral capacity to complain about a mere historical recollection by a sitting governor. As long as the targeted state-sponsored decimation of the opposition continues, the opposition parties will explore increasingly potent strategies, entirely within the ambit of the law, to prevent the enthronement of a one-party state under an elected dictator.
“The APC should be ashamed of their comprehensive failure in both governance and politics, and their resort to the crude tactics of inducement, intimidation and persecution of opposition leaders.”
Ememobong said the PDP would hold the federal government, the APC, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), and other democratic institutions responsible for any breakdown of law and order in the build-up to the 2027 elections.