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Sheikh Lemu and his report

Although he has every reason to retire and enjoy a well earned life of blissful retirement having being blessed with offspring that can take care…

Although he has every reason to retire and enjoy a well earned life of blissful retirement having being blessed with offspring that can take care of his essential needs, Sheikh Lemu is having none of that. In between running his NGO, the Islamic Education Fund (IEF), Lemu is to be seen making contributions at gatherings that have bearing with the love of his life: Islamic education. He also makes himself available for any national or local assignment to which he is invited to serve. This was how he ended up as the chairman of a federal government panel set up to investigate the post election violence which erupted in many parts of northern Nigeria. It was an assignment that was to expose the Sheikh to public scrutiny like nothing else he had done in the past.

Sheikh Lemu had as vice chairman another formidable personality in the person of retired Justice Samson Uwaifor, a former Justice of the Supreme Court with about four decades of judicial experience behind him. Part of the mandate of the panel was to look into the cause of the violence, the number of casualties and how a reoccurrence may be avoided. It was a simple enough and clear enough mandate, but a knotty one nonetheless.

For one thing, everybody, including the government, especially the government, knows the answers to the questions the government was asking the Sheikh Ahmed Lemu panel to answer. What the government was looking for then, was a different answer from the one everybody knows in the deep recesses of their minds. In other words the government was looking for an alternative to the truth.

This truth, which the government has been running away from, is this: The decision of Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan to contest the presidency in contravention of the power rotation agreement within his party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), is the remote cause of disenchantment in the north; the immediate cause of the post election violence in the region is the massive rigging of votes that followed the presidential (and in the case of Kaduna State the gubernatorial) elections. Even before the election, several influential national figures had warned of the inherent dangers of the Jonathan candidacy.

Like millions of Nigerians high and low, the Lemu committee knows this, and in fact said so in its report though not in so many words, or in such categorical terms. In its report, the Lemu panel said the people’s desire for change, economic deprivation and the negation of the zoning principle of the PDP helped to fuel the violence. The panel went on to add that other causes of the post election violence included statements by some notable politicians. Specifically the panel, as quoted by the Daily Trust edition of 11/10/11 said “Provocative utterances by many individuals…including the CPC presidential candidate (Gen. Muhammadu Buhari) to the electorate ‘to guard their votes’ appeared to have been misconstrued by many voters to include recourse to violence which they did…” In or out of context, this statement from the panel is problematic. Was it Buhari’s statement that was responsible for the violence, or the people’s interpretation of it? The panel then went on to complicate matters even more by making an attempt to exonerate Buhari, saying “However a long interactive session was held (between) the CPC presidential candidate and (a) five member delegation of the panel, led by the chairman…It was discovered that he himself was a victim of the violence…”

This is quite a puzzling presentation, to say the least. The panel appeared to have been torn between a desire to tell the government the hard truth, and a desire not to incur its displeasure. The next day after this ambiguous report was submitted, which was on Tuesday October 11, 2011 the media, naturally, took the angle that best served their various interests. The Daily Trust, ever so cautious, avoided controversy altogether and reported on its front page thus: “Crave for change caused post-election violence”; the Nation on the other hand reported: “Lemu Panel indicts Buhari over post-election violence”; The Sun newspaper also echoed the Nation with a front page lead: “Post election violence: Buhari Blamed”.

The next day Sheikh Lemu was left running from pillar to post trying to explain what his panel said or did not say. Interestingly the Sheikh did not say that he was misquoted by the newspaper reports; this, in itself,  validates the different interpretations that the media gave to the Lemu panel report. Neither was this controversy an improvement in the quality of the report. Scientifically, for any investigation to be useful it must leave no one in doubt as to its methodology, findings and conclusions. In this regard, the panel report fell rather short of expectations.

Although the report is yet to be made public, there is no mention yet of one of the crucial components of the mandate of the panel, which is the number of people killed in the violence. Before the election President Jonathan made a famous statement to the effect that his election was “not worth the blood of a single Nigerian”. As it turned out the election actually claimed not one but several hundred lives of Nigerians, at least two hundred of them under circumstances that were termed genocidal in southern Kaduna State. What is the panel’s finding on this all important aspect of its assignment? How many people were killed, how, by who, and where?

It is important to point out that no one is undermining the delicacy of the assignment with which the panel was tasked; but that is precisely the point: The membership of the panel was selected to solve a problem, not to compound it. Although it is rather too late in the day for any suggestions, it is nevertheless necessary for the government not to miss the subtle points that the panel made; it is the responsibility of the government to admit the truth even if it does so within its senior ranks only. Thereafter the government must make deliberate effort to begin a process of reconciliation between the aggrieved segments of the Nigerian society. Playing the ostrich may buy time, but it would not buy peace. It would in fact only make matters even worse. The government and the PDP (which is one and the same thing) know the route it took to bring us to where are, it must retrace its steps and then begin a genuine effort of making amends from where it veered off.

One last thing. For those who take pleasure in trying to make a scapegoat out of the CPC presidential candidate, they should know that his admonition to Nigerians to protect their votes was made prior to the election, not after it and cannot therefore constitute a post election violence matter; after the election Buhari kept his peace, and is still keeping it.

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