By John Joseph
Former Military Head of State, General Abdulsalami Abubakar-led National Peace Committee (NPC) met with President Muhammadu Buhari where they tabled some of the grievances raised by the Presidential candidate of the Peoples’ Democratic Party(PDP) Atiku Abubakar.
Recall that the major opposition party had rejected the results declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission(INEC) regarding the February 23 Presidential and National Assembly elections.
INEC had announced that Buhari polled 15,191,847million votes to defeat Atiku who scored 11, 262, 978 million votes.
Addressing State House Correspondents on the outcome of the meeting, which lasted for about an hour, General Abdulsalami acknowledged that the results of the elections have raised a lot of dust with divergent grievances across the polity.
The former Head of State however, said he was not out of place that the PDP has decided to approach the court to seek redress.
“As much as we have grievances, l am glad that the PDP say they are going to court to challenge the process, l think this is the right way to go about it, and l hope and pray that we will maintain this.”
General Abdulsalami confirmed that members of his panel had earlier met with the presidential candidate of the PDP who raised concerns contrary to the reported conditions as being speculated.
He said, “The Presidential election result has raised a lot of dust and the people feel aggrieved. Yesterday l met the PDP Presidential candidate and his party in other to ensure that this peace committee ensure that really, our concern is about Nigeria.
“Atiku presented his grievances and his observations, he did not present any conditions, he gave his complaints, which we have come to presented and discuss with Mr. President to see what can be done.
“And in other to listen to their grievances and what they think has gone wrong and we are here today to see his Excellency the President in other to relay the fears and concerns of the PDP and Mr. President he listen to us and has taken note of what we have told him.”
Abdulsalami who was in the villa with the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Mathew Hassan Kukah and John Cardinal Onaiyekan urged Nigerians to always explore peaceful means to address issues, regardless of the outcome of elections.
“Nigerians should please on behalf of this country and all of us, regardless, we need peace. This country is very, very important to all of us. We are not talking about self-interest, we are talking about the interest of the country.
“I keep saying, whenever there is violence, we are not going to see violence in Ikoyi, in the Villa and you will not find violence in the various government houses in this country. It is always the poor man that get to kill themselves and so on,” he added.
When the Peace Committee met with Atiku, he was reported to have given the federal government some conditions, some of which bothered on unfreezing of opposition politicians’ bank accounts.
Atiku had also insisted that accreditation of voters should take place before voting in subsequent elections, that there should be no deployment of the military in subsequent elections, that INEC should open its back end server to all participating parties and that there should be a release of all politicians detained illegally by FG.
