Repentant Ali

The Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Ahmadu Ali has warned politicians against acts and pronouncements that could lead to electoral violence, warning that politicians who sponsor violence might just be playing into the hands of the military who often seize such opportunities to sack civilian governments in Nigeria.

The warning is coming as political parties in the country traded blames as to the party that is responsible for much of the violence witnessed during elections and blamed the police for inaction especially in electoral violence and poll rigging involving the ruling party.

Ali said that the consequences of allowing political squabbles to degenerate to widespread violence as in the first and second republics were too grave to contemplate and urged leaders of the various political parties to put their houses in order to avoid sending the wrong signals to the barracks.

This is one of the most sensible things i have heard from Ahmadu Ali. It definitely means he has called himself to order too because he's been the chief architect of making violence-related pronouncements capable of truncating the nation's democracy.

It definitely means he is taking his diplomatic lessons seriously.