– Prominent Ijaw groups and elders urge Goodluck Jonathan to take responsibility for his defeat in the 2015 presidential election
– The president of IYC, Mr Eric Omare, faults Jonathan for not being aware of the conspiracies against him before the election
– The immediate past president of IYC, Udengs Eradiri, says Jonathan lost the election because he failed to establish the required machinery to get necessary feedback for the happenings across the country
Prominent Ijaw groups and elders have told former president, Goodluck Jonathan, to stop blaming his defeat in the 2015 presidential election on the North.
READ ALSO: Kastina residents raise concerns over Buhari’s health
The Ijaw leaders on Friday, April, 29, asked Jonathan to take responsibility for his defeat in the presidential election and come clean on the issues that led to his ouster from the presidency, The Nation reports.
ZENITHBLOG.com recalls that Jonathan was quoted in a new book, Against the Run of Play, written by Segun Adeniyi, as saying that his re-election ambition was frustrated by northern betrayers.
But the two prominent Ijaw groups, Ijaw Youth Council (IYC) Worldwide and the Ijaw National Congress (INC), including some Ijaw leaders, have dismissed Jonathan’s claims as untrue.
Prominent Ijaw groups and elders have blamed Goodluck Jonathan for his defeat in the 2015 presidential election.
The president of IYC, Mr Eric Omare, faulted Jonathan for not being aware of the conspiracies against him before the election when he occupied the highest political position with all security apparatus under his watch.
He said: “I would like to align myself with statements credited to former Senate President David Mark who said that he told Jonathan that there was a conspiracy against him but how Jonathan could not decipher the information was what he could not fathom.
“Jonathan would not say he didn’t know about the conspiracy. You cannot be the commander-in-chief with all the security at your disposal without knowing of a conspiracy by a region against you. It was a conspiracy that was obvious to all Nigerians except himself. He needs not say it.”
Also, a famous Ijaw leader and immediate past president of IYC, Mr Udengs Eradiri, said Jonathan lost the presidential election because the former president failed to establish the required machinery before the election to get necessary feedback for the happenings across the country.
He recalled telling Jonathan at the time to go outside conventional security protocol to gauge the mood of the nation but the former president ignored his advice.
He said: “I don’t see the North as betraying Jonathan. I think the problem was that Jonathan did not have the machinery necessary to give him full feedback of what was happening. It was Jonathan’s fault, not the fault of the North.
“A leader must have a feedback machinery and always have the team that reviews information that comes from the field. As a President, apart from your routine government machinery or security informants, you must have your personal-on-the-ground assessment.
“I remember that at a point as IYC President, I made a publication calling on the President at that time to go outside of security protocol and land at Port Harcourt Airport instead of using helicopter to Yenagoa, and that he would see the neglect of the people by the government.
“I told him that security was only deceiving him and telling him that following the road to Yenagoa was risky. So anytime he was coming to the region, he was flying helicopter, so he could not see how bad the region was until the day we were escorting him to Yenagoa and he almost wept at the state of the East West Road.
“So, it is not the fault of the north. It was Jonathan’s fault. As a President, he should have had a feedback mechanism especially towards election so that he would use it as a buffer.”
Meanwhile, a former governor of Niger state, Babangida Aliyu has revealed why the North opposed former president Goodluck Jonathan’s re-election bid in 2015.
Aliyu said the North backed out because Jonathan reneged on his promise to govern for only one term of four years.
The former governor, who was then the chairman of the Northern Governors Forum made the revelation in the new book by the chairman of the This Day editorial board, Segun Adeniyi titled: “Against The Run of Play.”
In the book, Aliyu said: “If Jonathan had been clever enough to say he would not run and had stuck with the Peoples Democratic Party’s zoning formula by supporting a young northern candidate, I am almost certain Buhari would have shed his ambition to contest in 2015 knowing there was no way he would win.”
The book noted that one major issue of contention that rocked the PDP leading up to the election was that by seeking a second term, Jonathan was reneging on his much-talked about pledge to spend only one time in office.
In the video below, ZENITHBLOG.com asks some Nigerians if they support the death penalty for looters.
‘);
});
}(window, document);
0naze
No comments:
Post a Comment