Revolution: Sowore crossed the red lines- Oshiomhole

The All Progressive Congress National Chairman, Adams Oshiomhole on Wednesday justified government detention and clampdown of Omoyele Sowore, convener of the Global Coalition for Security and Democracy, and other anti-government protesters, saying that they were arrested for crossing the red lines, over the calls for “Revolution.”

Oshiomhole stated this while fielding questions from State House Correspondents after leading members of the party’s National Working Committee to meet with President Muhammadu Buhari, at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

Oshiomhole, however, affirmed that Nigerians have the right to protest, adding that such protesters must properly articulate their grievances and it must be devoid of forcefully taking over “a properly constituted government.”

The APC Chairman who stated that they were at the Villa to present their audited party spending for the general election to the President, however, refused to make public the details of revenue and expenditures for the elections.

“Because you are not a contributor I am not obliged to account to you. I am accountable to APC members and unless you show me your membership card, I am not obliged to report to you,” told reporters.

He said the statement was presented to the President because “He is a very senior member of the APC and so he is entitled to know how much we spent, and as the steward of the party, I am entitled to present the report of my stewardship and the cost we incurred in the course of that stewardship.”

Oshiomhole who stated that he believes Nigerians have a right to protest, however said such protest must contain details of the issues being canvassed

“I believe people have a right to contest issues, people have the right to disagree. I have often said government doesn’t have the right to dictate to people how to protest, but you must state exactly what you want. I ask you to name any country in the world where somebody stands up and says after the election that I contested and lost, now therefore I want revolution.

“Go and check the dictionary and political meaning of a revolution, if it comes it will be like the Christmas turkey, nobody knows which one will be first to be slaughtered at Christmas.

“I think we do need to take things seriously; we have serious issues in this country, I have my own reservations about many things but we have submitted to this process and we must work hard to make it work,” a former labour leader, said.

He said that Nigeria must deliver to the poor and that the APC government must deliver. He noted that the challenge was with the mandate (given by Nigerians to the government), “how do you recreate the middle class so that Nigeria can be stable, and all other things will then fall in line?”

“All that is required is clear thinking, determination and to ensure that the ministers that are coming are not coming to implement what they think, but that they are coming to implement programmes that the party has agreed to. And that is why they are going to have a retreat before the president assigns ministerial positions to them,” he said.

He declared that “the party, the Executive, the National Assembly all of us working together sharing ideas, we are much more likely to make faster progress and those are the sort of things we discussed.

“The tragedy, for now, is that over the period people are either very poor or they are very rich. The president has to provide leadership working with the National Assembly leadership to see how we can over the next four years deliver so that the current situation of extremely poor and extremely rich will be bridged by recreating the middle class.”