Don’t push Plateau into avoidable crisis, PEGGA warns

By Lateef Ibrahim, Abuja

A pro-democracy group, Peace and Good Governance Advocates, PEGGA has tasked the nation’s judiciary not to allow the evolving peace on the plateau to be consumed through the actions of a few errant officers and their political collaborators.

The group in a statement issued by its National Coordinator, Mani Immam on Wednesday, warned that the contradictory and sometimes conflicting judgments being issued by the election petition tribunals could boomerang into a popular uprising.

Alleging that there is a limit to which the populace can endure electoral manipulations, PEGGA in the statement tasked the National Judicial Council, NJC to put special focus on the Plateau and avoid the state and the country unnecessary tension on account of contradictory and conflicting judgments dispensed to erode the popular mandate of the people.

The group in the statement said, “We want to draw the attention of all concerned as to the growing tension on the plateau on account of what is now being drummed to the citizenry that the so called owners of Plateau State are determined to take control of the state.

“This boast that is being made by some former office holders and their supporters has seen them jumping and leaping at the surprising judgments of the Court of Appeal and the tribunals that have led to the sacking of a number of persons popularly elected during the last elections.

“The whisper is that apart from the legislators that these so-called owners of the Plateau want to take control of the State House of Assembly and the Government House.

“What was initially thought as a joke is increasingly taking the form of reality with the use of technicalities and twisted judicial logic to upturn the popular decisions taken by the electorate during the last General Election.

“We are appalled that at a time when issues pertaining to the nomination of candidates have been firmly established by the Supreme Court we are at a loss that the election panels on the plateau are heeding the plea of the All Progressives Congress, APC in seeking the removal of their Peoples Democratic Party, PDP rivals.

“While we are non-partisan, we are, however, afraid that this judicial gambit is increasingly raising tension on the Plateau and call on the judicial authorities to be mindful of the ongoing developments lest they be also held culpable in the implosion that may arise”, the group warned.