A committee constituted to look
into the April 19 electoral violence
in some states of the federation,
has named the
"provocative utterances by
politicians including Muhammadu
Buhari, of the Congress for
Progressive Change, CPC", as one of
the major causes of the wide
spread electoral violence in some
parts of the country.
The committee also recommended
that President Goodluck Jonathan
"orders security agencies to fish out
culprits of violence for
prosecution".
This was the summation as
contained in the report which was
submitted by the Dr. Ahmed Lemu
led Committee on Post Election
Violence and Civil Disturbance, to
President Goodluck Jonathan, on
Monday.
The president had, in May,
constituted a 22-member panel to
investigate the cause of the civil
unrest in Akwa Ibom State and
some parts of the North.
Lemu noted that "the statements
were obviously misconstrued", by
many voters, but however ignited
the crises, adding that "even
General Buhari, the CPC presidential
candidate, also lost some of his
properties to the violence".
"Provocative utterances by many
individuals and the widespread
charge by prominent politicians
including the CPC presidential
candidates to the electorate 'to
guard their votes' appeared to have
been misconstrued by many voters
to include recourse to violence
which they did," he said.
Highlighting eight causes of the
crisis, the report stated that one of
the major cause of the post election
violence was the failure to act on
previous recommendations of
committees, adding that "the
failure facilitated the wide spread
sense of impunity in the culprits
and perpetrators of crimes and
violence in the Nigerian society".
In his response, Jonathan said he
was more interested in not having
a repeat of such violence in the
2015 elections, and promised to
look into all past recommendations
and reports on various crisis across
the nation and bring it to the
Federal Executive Council for
deliberation and afterwards issue a
white paper.
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