The Labour Party has confronted the Department of State Service, DSS, accusing the intelligence agency of operating double standards.
Labour Party’s remark is in response to the alarm raised by the DSS that some politicians are plotting against swearing in of President-elect, Bola Tinubu, and instead wanted an interim government in place.
While relating the said plot by its spokesman, Peter Afunanya, the secret service talked tough, “While its monitoring continues, the DSS will not hesitate to take decisive and necessary legal steps against these misguided elements to frustrate their obnoxious intentions.”
The statement arose retort from the Labour Party’s Chief Spokesperson, Dr Yunusa Tanko, who accused the DSS of turning blind eyes to the violence that characterised the polls, but now found its voice, adding that aggrieved Nigerians are beyond its threat.
Tanko’s statement in part: “We are certain that Nigerians who want to take back their country will not be intimidated or blackmailed into abandoning a legitimate course.
“As a party, we have submitted ourselves to pursuing the course of justice through constitutional means, it will not serve as the interest of democracy collapses in Nigeria.
“We will like to ask, where was the DSS when our members and other Nigerians were being attacked, maimed and killed especially in Lagos?
“Where was the DSS when MC Oluomo and his ilk were engaged in ethnic profiling and violence against Nigerians of a certain ethnic nationality over their democratic choices?
“We needed the DSS to step up its game then but it failed. If it had done what it was supposed to, our nation would have been better for it.
“Now that Nigerians have decided to follow laid down democratic procedures of drawing attention to injustice warnings and threats are being issued.
“The DSS ought to have issued these warnings from the beginning to show Nigerians that this country belongs to all of us and not the personal fiefdom of an individual or a group.
“We urge the DSS to send these words of caution to those bigots who are pushing this country to the brink of disaster with their utterances and violent conduct against other peace-loving Nigerians who do not subscribe to their political views or speak their language.”
