By Uche Amunike
The Zamfara State Urban and Regional Planning Board, ZURPB, has marked the state’s PDP Secretariat as illegal and pencilled for demolishing.
The spokesman of the Deputy Governor’s office, Umar Aminu Gusau while addressing newsmen at the secretariat, expressed shock over the marking of the structure as illegal and ordering the stoppage of activities going on at the secretariat.
He posited that the reason why the secretariat was marked as an illegal structure was because of the political differences in the states, saying that the present administration does not want any opposition.
He stated that PDP leaders in the state wrote official letters to the state Commissioner of Police, Civil and Security Defence Corps, Department of State Security(DSS) and other relevant authorities who all acknowledged the letters before the impact of painting the secretariat.
His words: ‘ZUREPB cannot claim that we did not inform the board officially before embarking on painting the secretariat. We know this is power play.
He further stated that when the All Progressives Congress (APC), led by the former Governor Abdul Aziz Yari, PDP in the state was allowed to operate without any form of molestation, but presently in the APC administration, they do not want any party to challenge them.
When asked what the next line of action of the PDP leadership in the state would be, Gusau stated that the leadership of the party was waiting for the Deputy Governor, Barrister Mahadi Aliyu Gusau to give his reaction, as he is the leader of the party, presently in the state.
As at Thursday, when the Director-General of Zamfara State Urban and Regional Planning Board, ZURPB, Idris Garba Rikiji was contacted, he declined commenting on the matter saying that he will brief Newsmen on Friday to that effect.
Different opinions have been given over the plans to demolish the PDP secretariat, however, certain people condemned the move saying that the whole process was politically motivated, while some others said that government did that for security reasons.
Ibrahim Mainasara on his part, believed that the APC-led government in the state does not want any strong opposition in the system and therefore decided that PDP was a threat and deserved to be silenced.
His words: ‘I advise APC to play the politics by the rules of the game instead of witch hunting another political party. The people in both APC and PDP are all Zamfara citizens and should be allowed to practice politics by choosing parties of their choices’ he lamented.
The proposed PDP secretariat, according to some others, constitute security threats, seeing that it is located directly opposite the State Ministry of Finance, saying that it is a political office of the number-one opposition party in the state and that thugs will always be there and can attack the Ministry in case of any political issues.
As at the time this report was filed the state government had not made any official statement concerning their alleged plan of demolishing the PDP secretariat in the state.
