Bad Belle!! Just Like PDP, We Won’t Hang Buhari’s Portrait Anywhere Around Us – LP, PPA

Two other political parties, the Labour

Party and Progressive Peoples Alliance,

have joined the main opposition party,

the Peoples Democratic Party, in

refusing to hang the portrait of

President Muhammadu Buhari in their

respective secretariats.

The two parties hinged their decision on

the action of the ruling All Progressives

Congress, which before it came to power,

allegedly refused to hang the portrait of

former President Goodluck Jonathan in its

national secretariat.

Both the LP and PPA stressed that their

action was a payback for the APC.

This is as chieftains of the PDP expressed

divergent views on their party’s action,

which was announced by its National

Publicity Secretary, Olisa Metuh, on

Tuesday.

“We will never hang his (Buhari) portrait

in this office, because President Buhari is

not known to our party. He is not a

leader of our party and, therefore, we

will never put his portrait here. We are a

political party, very partisan and

therefore, we are not going to hide that,”

Metuh had told our correspondent on the

telephone.

One of our correspondents, who visited

the national secretariat of the PPA,

situated along Emeka Anyaoku Street,

Area 10, Garki Abuja, on Friday, observed

that the President’s portrait was

conspicuously missing.

The National Chairman of the party, Mr.

Peter Ameh, explained that the APC

blazed the trail of “subtle civil

disobedience” when it was in opposition.

Ameh said, “Your storyline should be

whether the APC had the photograph of

ex-President Goodluck Jonathan. They did

not. And that is the story; the APC did not

have Jonathan’s portrait in the party’s

national secretariat.

“Everything is about precedent.

Throughout Jonathan’s tenure, the APC

didn’t have his photograph; so, may be

other political parties are also learning

from the precedent set by the APC. They

are following in the footsteps of the party

during the last administration.”

A similar situation obtained at the

national secretariat of the LP also situated

in Garki.

The National Chairman, LP, Abdulkadir

Abdulsalam, said the party did not have

Buhari’s portrait, noting that apart from

the fact that the APC never accorded

Jonathan such respect, the new

administration had failed to make the

official portrait of Buhari available to it.

Abdulsalam said, “We don’t have the

photograph of President Buhari in our

secretariat because the APC never had

the photograph of ex-President Jonathan

in their offices.

“We are supposed to get it but we don’t.

The fact of the matter is that the Federal

Ministry of Information should have

called us, not only political parties, to say

that the President’s photograph is

available at the Federal Ministry of

Information and that all organisations

should apply for it.”

Meanwhile, top chieftains of the PDP

have expressed divergent views on the

position espoused by Metuh.

A stalwart of the party in Oyo State,

Senator Lekan Balogun, said hanging of

the President’s portrait should not be an

issue to Nigerians.

Although he questioned PDP’s position on

it, Balogun, however, said that if the

constitution did not back hanging of the

President’s portraits in all places,

discretion should be exercised in doing

so.

He said, “If it has become acceptable by

the years, it is left for anybody to hang it.

It will sound partisan to the extreme. It is

not a constitutional requirement, but the

PDP should not be the party that will

reject hanging the President’s portrait,

bearing in mind that when Goodluck

Jonathan of the party served as President,

everybody put his portrait in their offices

at the time.

“Unless you can prove that when

Jonathan was ruling, the APC did not

hang his portrait, it should not be an

issue. It is the kind of thing Nigerians

play on.”

A prominent member of the party from

the state, Chief Richard Akinjide (SAN),

refused to comment on the issue. He told

our correspondent that if the PDP had

taken a position on the issue, he would

rather not comment on it.

The Chairman and the Publicity Secretary

of the PDP, Kwara State chapter, Iyiola

Oyedepo and Rex Olawoye, however

differed with Metuh.

In separate telephone interviews with one

of our correspondents in Ilorin, they

stated that Metuh’s position was wrong,

adding that as the President of Nigeria,

Buhari’s portrait should be everywhere

and that he deserved to be respected.

However, the National Publicity Secretary

of the APC, Lai Mohammed, dismissed the

controversy as “a non-issue.”

A constitutional lawyer, Fred Agbaje, who

spoke with SUNDAY PUNCH in a

telephone interview, described the

practice of displaying presidents’ portraits

as a civic responsibility embedded in the

constitution.

According to him, though the constitution

does not expressly provide that the

President’s portrait be hung, failure to do

so in public places amounts to reneging

on a civic responsibility, which is a

constitutional requirement.

He said, legally, by one of those old 1960

laws, which we inherited, we are

supposed to do that (display presidents’

portraits). “Even if it is not part of our

constitution, it is part of our civic duty

under the constitution that all public

places should display the portrait as a

mark of respect for constituted

authority.”

A Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Mr. Emeka

Ngige, similarly told SUNDAY PUNCH that

although the constitution did not

explicitly provide that the President’s

portrait must be hung, it had become a

universally accepted convention as a sign

of accordance of respect.