Olusegun Obasanjo
Investigation by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) of the allegation by former President Olusegun Obasanjo that President Goodluck Jonathan was training and arming killer squad for this year’s elections may have been stalled.
NHRC Chairman Dr. Chidi Odinkalu, who said this in Abuja at the weekend, lamented the uncooperative attitude of the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF), Mohammed Adoke (SAN), and Obasanjo.
Dr. Odinkalu said the AGF and the former president, who are key to the investigation, refused to honour NHRC’s requests to furnish it with the information and evidence it required to carry out the investigation.
Obasanjo had, in an 18-page letter to Jonathan in December 2013, accused the president of, among others, keeping over 1,000 people on his political watch list, secretly training snipers and other armed men as well as acquiring weapons for political purposes.
The NHRC boss said: “What happened was very straightforward. We need materials and evidence from different people. We have written to the attorney general of the Federation to give us his evidence. We have written to General Obasanjo to give us his evidence. And we have heard from neither side. Now, we have repeated the demand and we have heard from neither side.
“The process is facts-based. It is evidence-led. We are not going to sit down here and manufacture evidence. We wanted to give everybody a chance before proceeding. Again, we wanted to convene the public hearing. But again, it was close to the elections.
“So, we took a deliberate decision that we did not want to make that a factor in the elections. After the elections, we are going to convene that hearing. But if the attitude continue, which is that neither side is willing to give us evidence, we will adjourn it sine die (indefinitely)”.
Dr. Odinkalu also explained why the commission decided not to go public on its conclusion in the case of rights abuse made against Enugu State Governor Sullivan Chime by his wife, Clara.
Mrs. Chime had accused her husband of keeping her incommunicado against her wish on allegation that she was mentally unstable.
“The commission also has the responsibility to fashion remedies to fit the facts. In the case of the wife of the Enugu State Governor, the most important thing for us was that there is a child, who is barely four years old.
“We have a responsibility to that child. And everything we have done has been focused on making sure that that child is protected. Everything we did was done in the best interest of that child,” he said.
The NHRC boss said his commission would undertake an independent investigation into allegations of rights abuses by the opposition, which claimed agents of the Federal Government had bugged telephones and deployed armed soldiers against it.
“If somebody wants the commission to be involved, he should bring us the materials, give us the evidence or allow us to access the evidence.
“We have received about 10 petitions on election related violence. We have constituted the most high-powered investigating team this commission has ever instituted to see us through the season of election violence related incidents.
“We will take everything. We are not going to shirk it. We are going to do our homework and necessary investigations and come out with our findings,” he said.
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