Utomi decries arrest of El-Rufai by SSS

Posted: Thursday, July 7, 2011

THE presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Mega Party (SDMP) in the 2011 general elections, Prof. Pat Utomi on Tuesday decried the arrest of former FCT Minister, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai.
 El-Rufai, a chieftain of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) was last Saturday arrested by the SSS at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja and later released.
A statement in Lagos by the Asst. Director, Public Relations of the SSS, Marilyn Ogar, confirmed the arrest.
Ogar said that the arrest followed articles in the cyber and the print media credited to El-Rufai that were inciting, inflammatory and grossly misleading.
The former minister was quoted in the media as condemning an alleged allocation of N865 billion in the 2011 budget to the national security adviser, the police and defense.
The SSS said the figure was false and seditious.
Utomi, in his statement, pointed out that the arrest of El-Rufai "smacked of intolerance and high handedness".
He queried why a citizen was being harassed for his view on governance, noting that the expression of views was the beauty of democracy.
The statement noted that El-Rufai deserved a medal and not vilification for his "people- centered critic of the current challenges facing administrations in the country."
It said that Nigerians should recognize that the current biggest threat to progress in the country remained the cost of governance.
It said that the structure and nature of public expenditure was not just a subject of daily debates, town hall meetings and public demonstrations, but an indication of the challenges of the nation's democracy.