Don’t push Plateau into avoidable crisis, pro-democracy group 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.”