El-Rufai’s ‘Body Bag’ Comment: PDP Threatens Peace Accord Pullout

Get Best Daily Health Tips Here

Following comments by Governor Nasir el-Rufai of Kaduna state that any foreigners who may interfere in Nigeria’s electoral process would be returned in “body bag,” the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) today threatened to pull out in the peace accord it signed with other political parties.

The Kaduna Governor while appearing on NTA’s Tuesday Live programme, and speaking on the recent statements by the United States, United Kingdom and the European Union to sanction those that may interfere in the coming election, said: “Those that are calling for anyone to come and intervene in Nigeria, we are waiting for the person that would come and intervene, they would go back in body bags.”


But addressing a press conference in Abuja today over the matter, Kola Ologbondiyan, National Publicity Secretary and Director, Media & Publicity PDP Presidential Campaign Organisation, said the party considered that the governor’s remark as directly inimical to a peaceful, free and fair election.

He stated that the PDP is therefore left with no option than to consider a review of its signatory in the national peace accord if no action is immediately taken to curb this trend.

Ologbodiyan added: “Nigerians are still in a shock over comments by the Governor of Kaduna state, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, who declared on national television that members of the global democratic institutions that are working for a peaceful election in Nigeria will return to their countries in body bags. What a threat?

“We call on the international community to immediately impose a travel ban on el-Rufai for this inciting comment against peaceful elections in our country.”

The party also noted what it said is the plot to redeploy, a former Chief Security Officer to APC leader, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, CP Kayode Egbetokun, as Kwara state Commissioner of Police, “where he has been handed the instruction to incite the people, cause pandemonium and pave the way for outright rigging in favour of President Buhari and all other candidates on the platform of APC.”

According to the party this is in line with plans by the Muhammadu Buhari Presidency and the APC to effect a mass deployment of top security officers, particularly the police, “to intimidate, harass and manhandle Nigerians that will not support the self-succession bid of President Muhammadu Buhari as well as aiding APC thugs to snatch ballot boxes and orchestrate violence in the elections.”