Buhari guilty of human rights abuse in 2011 -PDP campaign

The Presidential campaign office of President Goodluck Jonathan said in Abuja on Sunday that the Presidential Candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari(retd.), must answer to charges of alleged human rights abuse over the 2011 presidential election.

It said that there was no way Buhari, who was then the presidential candidate of the defunct Congress for Progressives Change, could exonerate himself from the crisis that followed the 2011 presidential election which was won by President Jonathan.

Director of Media and Publicity of the PDP Presidential Campaign Organisation, Chief Femi Fani-Kayode, stated this at a press briefing in Abuja on Sunday.

He said lawyers from Netherlands have already filled a case before the International Criminal Court, at The Hague.

He also said his party and its presidential candidate were not afraid of Buhari in the forthcoming presidential election.

He said he was sure that President Jonathan was going to triumph over the retired general at the poll.

Fani-Kayode said, “And after Buhari’s rejection at the poll, he may have to prepare to face charges of human rights abuses and criminality filed against him before the International Criminal Court on account of the 2011 electoral violence in Nigeria.

“According to the African Herald Express report on the issue published on February 20, 2015, Dutch lawyers– Prakken d’Oliveira, a Human Rights Law Firm based in Amsterdam, said it had filed a criminal complaint against Buhari at the ICC. Prakken d’ Oliveira, led by Prof. Sluiter, Lawyer and Partner, is said to be acting on behalf of the Nigerian Northern Coalition for Democracy and Justice and two individual victims.

“The complaint, according to the report, alleges that Buhari incited and orchestrated the electoral violence in Nigeria in 2011, which led to the violent murder of over 938 and 735 injured, many of them children, women and young men.”

The complaint, the report further said, “presents factual evidence, including the names and descriptions of a sampling of those who lost their lives in the violence.”

He said these include youth corpers who were killed in Giade, Bauchi State, in the 2011 post-election violence.

While alleging that the Chatham House outing was organised only two days before it took place and well after Buhari had arrived in London, he also added that questions that were asked were given to him two days before the event and the answers were prepared for him and given to him to rehearse.