Niger: Anxiety as PDP raises alarm over APC plot to go to war

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has said President Bola Tinubu and the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) have resolved to plunge Nigeria into a war nation over the political crisis rocking the Republic of Niger.

In a statement signed by the national publicity secretary of the PDP, Debo Ologunagba, the APC-led federal government is accused of involving the Nigerian army in a "needless conflict" with the neighbouring Niger.

In the statement, which was posted on the party's Twitter page on Sunday, August 13, Ologunagba said the PDP condemned what can be described as desperation by the APC and President Tinubu.

According to the PDP, the insistence of President Tinubu and the APC to draft Nigerian soldiers into the Niger Republic against the National Assembly approval as well as Nigerians from all spheres of life, is a testament to an interior motive of the president to destabilise the country.

However, the PDP frowned at the unconstitutional change of government in the Niger Republic but insisted that the situation in the neighbouring country did not warrant any peacekeeping move that would involve the Nigerian Army.

The statement reads in part: "The APC is only desperate to deploy Nigerian military to Niger Republic so as to provoke possible external aggression from that country, thereby orchestrating a situation for the declaration of a State of Emergency in Nigeria with the tendency to cripple the judicial process on the 2023 Presidential election."