Post-election violence: Committee submits report, blames Buhari

THE Presidential Committee on Post-Election Violence has blamed inciting comments by Major-General Muhammadu Buhari (retd), presidential candidate of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) and other chieftains of the party, for the violence that erupted in about 14 northern states of the country.
Sheik Ahmed Lemu, chairman of the committee, while submitting the report to President Goodluck Jonathan at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, on Monday, said issues of politics and not religion were the root causes of the violence that led to the death of hundreds of people, including members of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) and the destruction of properties worth billions of naira.
The CPC chieftains had charged their supporters to defend their votes at all cost, even with their blood and the party went ahead to reject the outcome of the presidential election result.
Lemu said: “Provocative utterances by many individuals and the widespread charge by prominent politicians, including the CPC presidential candidate to the electorate ‘to guard their votes’ appeared to have been misconstrued by many voters to include recourse to violence which they did.”
He disclosed that “a long interactive session was held between the CPC presidential candidate and a five-member delegation of the panel, led by the chairman, in the office of the CPC presidential candidate in Kaduna on 14th September 2011.

It was discovered that he himself was a victim of the violence.
“Generally speaking, the basic cause of the violence in nearly all the communities concerned is political. Ethno-religious sentiments were brought into the issue through negative campaigns and rumour mongering by unscrupulous individuals to achieve their ulterior motives,” he said.
He said “the zoning controversy, which started basically as an internal political affairs of the ruling party, ultimately changed the nature of the presidential election into ethno-religious contest, particularly in the northern states.”
According to Lemu, “the panel discovered that the remunerations and allowances of the members of the legislature, in particular, are considered by stakeholders who addressed us or wrote to us about the issue to be outrageous. It has turned politics in Nigeria to a do-or-die affair, for which many politicians of all parties are seriously establishing private armies to execute.
“In that respect, easy access to drugs, serious general poverty at the grass roots level and youth unemployment, in particular, are providing many foot soldiers ready for recruitment at a cheap rate. The security agencies could verify this assertion also.”
In his remark, President Jonathan said “I agree with you that ignorance must have caused some of the basis of this crisis, because looking at the results of the election, the states where I lost, Kano and Bauchi, where I had the least, about 16 and 17 per cent, were the ones that had most crisis.”
Jonathan said the committee did not prescribe punishment, “but your report is there for other government organs to look into.”
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