Lagos State Governor, Mr. Babatunde Fashola and the All Progressives Congress (APC) on Tuesday decried the unconstitutional deployment of military personnel to the residence of the party’s National Leader, Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

Fashola said the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan “has resorted to intimidation of the opposition parties and frustration of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in its bid to glue itself to power”.

He disclosed this during the APC campaign rally at Ejigbo in Oshodi-Isolo LCDA, saying the Jonathan administration “is a government that lies with everything. They have removed security from the head of the commission”.

The governor said the deployment of troops to the residence of Tinubu was unconstitutional and undemocratic, but vowed that APC would not be intimidated. “Our votes will speak for us,” he added.

“When the president was begging for our votes in 2011, he did not use soldiers and was begging us. He was saying he had no shoes. After we helped him, what has he been doing he has been inflicting pains on us,” he said.

Also reacting to the development, Tinubu, in a statement by his media assistant, Mr. Sunday Dare said he would not be intimidated by this show of strength, intimidation and possible harassment. “I remain resolute in my advocacy and support for the rule of law,” he added.

“Jonathan’s government has through the service chiefs staged a coup against Nigerians and the constitution and now wants to silence his critics. I will not be muzzled through the barrel of the gun,” Tinubu maintained.

The APC national leader added that the guns and bullets which the Nigeria Armed Forces should have used “to defeat Boko Haram are now being turned against the opposition and innocent Nigerians”, stressing that he would “remain emphatically resolute and committed to the path of change in Nigeria”.

The statement added: “The soldiers were first noticed on Sunday, a few minutes to 11 pm in an army truck. They were stationed about 500 metres away from Tinubu’s gate. Later they moved closer to his gate as if making efforts to enter.

“The stern looking soldiers were around for hours on Sunday and returned on Monday to continue their surveillance. Monday night about 10.45pm, they returned to the residence in two army vans and were there throughout the night.

“Some of the soldiers discharged from the van and walked back and forth in front of the house and around the house in what is clearly some casing effort. Tuesday morning, two vans from the army were stationed on both sides of the house along Bourdillon Road, their missions shrouded in secrecy.”

In its condemnation of the soldier’s deployment, the Lagos State chapter of APC also denounced the military siege to Tinubu’s residence.

In a press release signed by the Lagos State Publicity Secretary of the APC, Joe Igbokwe, the party warned that Jonathan and the leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) “scared of the mass rejection they are presently facing after wasting precious years of Nigerian lives, will plunge Nigeria into an intractable crisis if it does not arrest its present predilection of bringing Nigeria down because Nigerians have rejected PDP.

“Nigerians know that the PDP, its leaders, supporters, enablers dread Tinubu like a pestilence and if the weight of the gargantuan smear campaign and devilish propaganda the PDP has sponsored against the person of Tinubu has failed to sway Nigerians to continue supporting the banditry of PDP governance, it should know that it is struggling in vain.

“For the PDP to think that after fighting the military to a standstill, Asiwaju should be intimidated by the impotent show of force by a dying, failed regime and its scared enablers, then it must have its head examined.”

The party viewed the attempt to intimidate and harass Tinubu as one of the desperate efforts by a dying regime to arrest the forces of history, warning that the PDP and the Jonathan presidency were struggling in vain, “as nothing would save them from being thrown to the dumpsite of history”.

“We see this brazen display of brute force as yet another in the series of the criminal misuse of the army which should be fighting the rampaging Boko Haram insurgents but have been turned into the enforcement wing of PDP’s inordinate selfish ambition.

“A nation that is being assailed with the sordid details of the misuse of the army to rig elections for the PDP in Ekiti is today being treated with the scenario of using the same army to intimidate opposition forces so as to procure another extension for a failed regime that ranks not only as the most corrupt, but the most clueless and incompetent in the history of the country.

“It is a pity that when poor countries like Niger and Chad are sending troops to fight insurgents in Nigeria, our own troops are being deployed to fight the opposition,” the party said.

However, the army has denied deploying a unit of its soldiers to barricade Tinubu’s residence.

The 81 Division Headquarters, under which Lagos falls as its area of responsibility, described the allegations as a ruse to heat up the polity unnecessarily.

Denying the allegation, the General Officer Commanding (GOC), 81 Division, Major General Tamubomiebi Dibi, said nothing of such ever happened.

Describing the alarm as a ruse, he said the only soldiers on that axis were those drawn from the Operation Mesa (OP MESA), a Lagos State Security initiative and the Quick Response Group (QRG).
He said the two groups have always been on patrol in the Ikoyi and Victoria Island areas, but no soldier had been deployed specifically to keep surveillance on the APC national leader.

“Why should we deploy soldiers to monitor Senator Tinubu, there was no need for it, as he has not done anything wrong.

“Note that the relative peace being enjoyed by Lagosians is due to the patrols being conducted by operatives of the military attached to the QRG and OP MESA.

“Again, our soldiers were not deployed to take over, surround or mount surveillance on Bola Tinubu’s house,” he said.

Also, the Assistant Director, Army Public Relations of 81 Division, Colonel Mustapha Anka, expressed ignorance of deployment of soldiers to the residence.

He said when the information filtered in yesterday; they quickly deployed an officer to Bourdillion to get details of the situation.

“When the officer came back, he said he did not find any soldier in the area but pockets of policemen apparently deployed to the residence of the APC leader,” he revealed.