By Tony Edike
EENUGU—FORMER Secretary to Enugu State Government and governorship aspirant of the PDP, Dr Dan Shere, yesterday absolved former governor Chimaroke Nnamani of involvement in the 2001 Adoration Ground tragedy, saying Governor Sullivan Chime had detailed knowledge of the incident.

Shere, who was reacting to a media report credited to Chime’s Commissioner for Enugu Capital Development Authority, Mr. John Egbo, that the people of Enugu should ask the Nnamani administration to give account of how it masterminded the “killing of innocent worshippers at the Adoration ground,” described the government’s belated remark as very deceitful.

The former SSG revealed that the incumbent governor in his capacity then as the Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, had set up a judicial panel of inquiry to unravel the cause of the tragedy, after which he returned a clean bill of health to the former governor. He said it would amount to “double-speaking” for the same person to now turn around to blame Nnamani for the tragedy.

He said: “I think the commissioner is ignorant and I don’t want to join issues with him. I think he is talking from his ignorance in order to keep his job, otherwise he should have asked his principal (Chime) who was the Attorney General who set up the judicial panel of inquiry and who came up with white paper about adoration.

If anything is to be known about adoration, it is the man who set up the judicial panel of inquiry and the man who got a white paper from it and the man who was representing the government in court, so Sullivan Chime knows more than anybody about it and I am sure he will probably know more than the former governor on the issue. It is not for someone, who was not in Enugu at the time. Chime should be made to tell the people more about the incident.”

Fourteen of the Catholic worshippers, especially women of the weekly adoration organized by a renowned Priest, Father Ejike Mbaka, had lost their lives in a stampede that occurred during the night event at Government Technical play ground, Enugu, nine years ago.

Although government had set up an inquiry, following allegations that “poisonous substances” were used by her agents on the worshippers leading to their death, the reports of the inquiry till date were not made known, despite efforts by the Catholic church, to prevail on government to reveal the content of the white paper.

Also reacting to the allegation of financial embezzlement raised by Commissioner Egbo against Nnamani, Shere, who was also a former Commissioner for Finance in the same government, said such allegation lacked basis, stressing that the anti-graft agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, was still handling the matter.

The former SSG however accused the government of Chime of squandering a whooping sun of N350 billion it has so far collected as allocation in the past three and half years, revealing that the EFCC may soon swoop on the officials of the government.

“For every standard road, there is a standard rate of building a kilometre road, so even if you said you have repaired a road and you didn’t confront environmental factors like water, you still have not worked. We all know what is happening in Enugu and we all know what is happening in the local governments; at the appropriate time, I am sure, EFCC will do their job,” he further added.