Lemu’s Report: Media Got it Wrong, Says Momoh

Written by Duncan Wednesday, 12 October 2011

The National Chairman of the Congress for Progre-ssive Change (CPC), Prince Tony Momoh, has said the media failed in interpreting Sheik Ahmed Lemu’s report to mean an indictment on the former Head of State and presidential candidate of the CPC, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (rtd).

Momoh said at a press briefing in Abuja, yesterday that the Lemu panel only observed that certain utterances by some leaders caused the post-election violence.

According to him, “General Buhari only said in Kaduna that people should come out to vote and protect their votes,” adding that former President Olusegun Obasanjo also made similar utterances.

“So General Buhari could not have been indicted because he never told anybody to go and embark on violence and destruction of lives and properties.

“Adams Oshiomhole in his own utterances asked the people to go and vote and that if their votes are stolen, they should kill the thieves,” the CPC boss said.

Momoh said the violence was a reaction by the people to the facts that they were not happy with human conditions and warned that there would be revolution in the country in the nearest future if the prevailing human conditions were not addressed now.

But the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has countered, saying that the post-election violence and other forms of civil disturbance that greeted the April 16, presidential election results were pre-meditated.

The PDP said yesterday in Abuja that the party was studying the Lemu report and would make its stand known soon.

The party also maintained that Buhari did not help matters during the violence.

It however praised the  Lemu presidential panel on the violence for doing a good job that would help the nation curb future occurrence.

National Publicity Secretary of (PDP), Professor Rufai Alkali, the PDP would immediately study the report and come out in clear terms with its own position.

Alkali, who spoke with journalists at the Court of Appeal premises, said the PDP had every cause to believe that the violence was pre-meditated because it broke out less than 24 hours after the presidential election took place.

Besides, he disclosed that the violence emanated from the states where CPC had larger votes and later spread, with wanton destruction of lives and property in the mayhem, allegedly perpetrated by those he called misguided elements.

The PDP spokesman alleged that PDP officials and even some innocent traditional rulers were the target of the attacks, adding that the party had every reason and cause to believe its position that it was pre-meditated.

Alkali said: “We politicians must work by the rule. We cannot have different standard but one that will help nurture our democracy because as leaders, we must be mindful of what we say in order not to mislead our followers and sympathisers.”

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