The senator representing Nasarawa North Senatorial District in the Senate, Senator Solomon Ewuga, on Tuesday alleged that the State Governor, Umar Tanko Al-Makura, deliberately implicated Egon elites over the last year’s Ombatse crisis in the state which led to death of many security operatives.
Ewuga , an Egon leader, made the allegation at a news conference in Abuja even as he faulted the panel report which indicted him of involvement in the bloody crises as contained in the report of Justice Joseph Fola Gbadeyan-led Commission of inquiry set up to look into the Alakyo killings of May 7, 2013.
Ewuga said though he had not seen the white paper, “for the governor to have read the six-volume paper and swiftly emerged with appropriate punishment within two days indicated it was premeditated.”
Ewuga, who is the Vice Chairman, Senate Committee on Land Transport, also expressed surprise that a panel, which merely invited him as a witness and not as an accused could find him guilty of an offense without giving him the opportunity of fair hearing.
He said, “I have not seen the White Paper and the Panel’s recommendation but whatever my response is today is based on what I saw on the media, first on AIT on Monday and then, on the pages of the newspapers on Tuesday.
“The report was handed in on Friday and it is a six-volume report. For the fact that the White Paper is already out indicates a premeditation because it was an ingenuous thing to have read those volumes and to decipher the appropriateness of the punishment or otherwise within two days.
“Secondly, I was invited as a witness to the Panel not as an accused and I was not availed of any cross examination of purported accusation against me which you know by virtue of the provision of the Constitution, breaches my fundamental rights to fair hearing.
“To my understanding of the issues, my invitation as a witness was supposed to establish the credibility or otherwise of what I know within my purview of the event related to whatever circumstance the Ombatse is involved in.”
Ewuga exonerated himself from the alleged financing of the activities of Ombatse Cultural Group and argued that he was being witch hunted for being politically visible in the state.
Ewuga had recently indicated interest in moving from the All Progressives Congress to the ruling People’s Democratic Party, and had expressed his interest to formalise his defection on the floor of the senate.
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