Violent Protests Were Spontaneous, Says Buhari

22 April 2011

Lagos — Presidential candidate of Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), Major-General Muhammadu Buhari (rtd), has said the riots that resulted in killings after the presidential polls, were “spontaneous”.

Buhari said the reaction of the people “to the rigging of the election” was beyond his control .

“I did not ask them to do that but I say I don’t advocate violence,” he said, lamenting that the state of welfare of Nigeria is yet to stabilise but “our biggest hope is multiparty democratic system. In no part of the country in the last twelve years of PDP has any part of the country reacted so spontaneously. We asked people to please not get unto the streets. We will go to the court.”

He also doubted an allegation that underage voters voted for him, saying while 40 per cent of those who voted for him during the last presidential elections were not under-aged, but said the same percentage of his votes were discounted after the polls.

Buhari, who spoke on Cable News Network (CNN) Thursday, said he had forwarded a complaint to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) regarding the reduction of his vote and nothing was done about it.

“I do not believe that 40 per cent underage voted for me but we can prove that 40 per cent of our votes were discounted through computer fraud. We’ve got a document on this and we’ve given to INEC and they said they’re going to do something about it but ignored it,” he said.

He agreed with the interviewer, Christian Purefoy, that local and international observers acknowledged the elections to be a remarkable improvement but said “it is not good enough and we’re going through constitutional and legal means to make sure it is corrected.”

Six day days after the April 16 election won by President Goodluck Jonathan of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the dust raised by the exercise is yet to settle as the three leading political parties – PDP, CPC and Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) – are accusing each other of engaging in malpractices.

Firing the first salvo, the CPC said the PDP won the election because the INEC allegedly awarded contracts for the printing of sensitive materials for the exercise to PDP members.

Speaking to journalists in Abuja Thursday, CPC National Chairman, Prince Tony Momoh, said: “We have the list of INEC printers who did the job locally here. The contractors INEC gave the printing job are all PDP people. One of the printers, even took part in the senatorial election and lost.

“We expressed worry that the printing, freighting and distribution of the election materials were done by members of the PDP. We believe that sensitive materials of this nature should not only be carefully handled but should be seen to be so.”

He said whereas the authorities of INEC gave them the impression that the sensitive materials were printed abroad, the true position was that these materials were indeed produced and distributed by PDP members.

Momoh said the CPC was in possession of evidence from a credible source that the entire results presented from Cross River, Rivers, Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Delta, Edo, Abia, Enugu, Anambra, Ebonyi, Imo, Ogun, Osun, Lagos, Sokoto, Jigawa, Gombe, Yobe, Zamfara, Adamawa, Nasarawa States and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) were manipulated to favour the PDP.

Speaking on the alleged clapdown on members of the party as a result of the violence that greeted the declaration of the presidential election result, Momoh said a petition had been forwarded to the Inspector-General of Police (IG) complaining about the targeting of CPC members and agents as perpetrators of the violence.

The petition read: “I write to draw your attention to what amounts to a declaration of war on members of the CPC all over the Northern part of the country. In the last 24 hours, they have been arrested in their hundreds, mainly from their homes.

“The arrest seems to be targeted against most of our agents who will man our polling units in the forthcoming last leg of the elections which will take place on Tuesday.”

But the PDP has dismissed the CPC challenge, saying it was prepared to meet CPC at the presidential election tribunal “any time”, and tasked the CPC to be ready to prove the allegation that the election was rigged.

Addressing newsmen after its National Working Committee (NWC) meeting, the Acting National Chairman of PDP, Dr. Harilu Mohammed Bello, said: “The presidential election was free and fair. We challenge Maj-Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (rtd.) or any political party to bring any evidence of rigging and the party must be ready to prove its allegation of rigging or any other electoral malpractice.”

Bello also challenged Buhari to proceed to the presidential tribunal to prove his allegation that the just concluded presidential election was rigged, stating, “any allegation of rigging must be proved at the tribunal; this is the position of the law”.

He said it was a high time that Nigerians should be patriotic and applaud a good election, instead of tarnishing the name and image of the country on the pages of newspapers.

According to the PDP acting national chairman, “By voting for President Jonathan, Nigerians have once more demonstrated their capacity to rise above petty primordial considerations and embrace the ideals of unity, good governance and national transformation.

“We have shown that at critical moments, we are all bound together by our common resolve to live together peacefully and entrust our future to those we believe will protect and advance our hopes and aspirations,”

Speaking on the post election violence, the PDP chairman said: “We are alarmed at the extent of bloodletting and destruction targeted at PDP leaders, members, government institutions, traditional rulers and even youth corps members.

“If the perpetrators of these heinous acts believe they can frighten our supporters away from the remaining elections, then they have miscalculated very badly. We remain undaunted in our determination to ensure that the right of all Nigerians to elect their leaders is never compromised. “The right of a people to choose those who rule over them is the root of liberty like they say.”

Giving account of its assessment of the exercise, the ACN said last Saturday’s presidential election was the most systematically rigged election in Nigeria’s history, and warned against any attempt to repeat such malfeasance in Tuesday’s governorship/state assembly polls. The party said this in a statement issued in Ilorin Thursday by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed.

It alleged that the PDP planned to massively rig the governorship and state assembly elections, especially in areas where Jonathan scored high votes, so as to give the world the impression that the result of the presidential election was not a fluke.

The ACN said the PDP simply stole more than enough for the owner to see during the last election, forgetting that if anyone thinks he/she knows how to hide things, others also know how to find them.

“What the PDP did last Saturday was simple: They colluded with security agents and INEC officials to cook figures which have now turned out to be their undoing, because the cooking was not intelligently carried out.

“An analysis of the results put out by INEC itself has shown a troubling pattern of clear manipulation. Everywhere the PDP perceived it was strong, it came out with incredibly high number of voters in its favour. Conversely, anywhere the opposition was perceived to be strong; the opposition’s margin of victory was unreasonably low.

“A few examples will suffice: In the South-South and South-East, where President Jonathan is believed to have strong support, the average turnout was 67 per cent each of registered voters, compared to 32 per cent for the South-West where he is believed to have a strong opposition. In the North-West and North-East, which is considered a bastion of opposition in the North, the average turnout of registered voters was 54 per cent.

“And whereas high voter turnout was recorded in states perceived to be sympathetic to President Jonathan in the different geopolitical zones (Bayelsa in South-South 85 per cent, Imo in South-East 84 per cent, and Plateau in North-Central (62 per cent), the opposite was the case for areas where the opposition was believed to be strong. Even in Katsina, Buhari’s hometown, the turnout was a paltry 52 per cent! Ditto for Kano (53 per cent); Sokoto (40 per cent) and Zamfara (51 per cent).

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