2015: North’s opposition against Jonathan cracks

by Soni Daniel

…As pro-Jonathan groups warn govs to face region’s problems and forget 2015  …
ABUJA — The attempt by influential Northern leaders to rally support for a consensus presidential candidate to replace President Goodluck Jonathan in 2015, has backfired, leading to the emergence of sundry groups flaying the leaders for trying to dictate to them on the way to go politically.

The crack in the north came barely two weeks after the Northern Elders Forum, the Arewa Consultative Forum and three other groups had met in Kaduna and resolved to coalesce into a Joint Action Committee with a view to ensuring the emergence of President in 2015.

Under the plot, which was confirmed to Vanguard by the Secretary of the Northern Elders Forum, NEF, Prof. Ango Abdullahi, the six groups had accepted to retain their identities, but to work as a team with a view to stopping Jonathan’s return to the top post.

According to Abdullahi, the move was deliberately initiated to bring the six groups under one umbrella for easy mobilisation and control as the race to the Villa gathers momentum.

But barely two weeks after the meeting, some northern groups sympathetic to Jonathan, have opposed the NEF and its allies in the north, saying that they did not have the right to dictate to them who becomes the President of Nigeria in 2015.

Apparently drumming up support for Jonathan’s re-election, the groups, noted that the North had never lined up under any particular candidate and would not be forced to do so in the next election.

One of the groups, which calls itself, Coalition of Concerned Northern Youths, CNY, said in Abuja, yesterday, that its members were concerned over the role of politicians in the north particularly governors, who seem to have taken it upon themselves to decide for others who gets the presidency in 2015.

Mohammed Danjuma, who signed the document in his capacity as the National Chairman of the CNY, warned the northern governors to stop meddling into the choice of a president for Nigeria in 2015 but to concentrate on their mandate to provide service to the down-trodden masses in the region.

“As concerned youths, we have found it necessary to state that the governors of the North were not elected to be traversing every nook and cranny of the country in chartered jets for their own personal agenda instead of tending to the constitutional responsibility for which they were elected in the first place.

“We have not only found this behaviour not only appalling but also repulsive, especially when the North is currently suffering from the devastating effect of insecurity, misrule, endemic poverty caused mainly by the lukewarm attitude of the leaders of the zone, who have always taken it upon themselves to tackle problems in other states leaving their home in disarray.

“It is because of these developments that we call on the governors to take urgent steps to concentrate on developing their states instead of wasting task payers’ money on moving around the country.”

Vanguard