President
Goodluck Ebele Jonathan was on Friday given a tongue lashing by Alhaji
Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, leader of the Niger Delta Peoples Volunteer Force
(NDPVF) who said the president has alienated his support base in the
South-South and South-East political zones forgetting that it was the
people from those zones who massively voted for him to win the last
general election.
The former chieftain of one of the most feared
Niger Delta militant groups, the NDPVF, who was addressing journalists
in his house in Abuja, said even though he has benefited from the
Jonathan presidency, he could not continue to keep quiet over the
government’s failure to deliver, warning that it would be difficult for
the president to secure the people’s mandate in 2015 if he chooses to
contest in that election.
Dokubo who said his conclusions are
based on the president's performance rate, predicted that the president
might not go beyond 2015 because he (Jonathan) has lost the support of
the entire south-east and south-south.
Earlier in March Asari
declared that Jonathan would occupy the Aso Rock Presidential Villa in
Abuja for eight years from 2011, but has dramatically changed his stance
saying it would be an uphill task for President Jonathan to be in Aso
Rock beyond 2015 as a result of the 'greedy' people who have caused his
real supporters, including former president Olusegun Obasanjo to abandon
him.
Asked why he was turning against the president, he said it
was no longer fashionable for him to keep quiet as things were already
going wrong with the Jonathan presidency
"I want to start with an Ijaw proverb which says: the eyes watched its seven children die.
Instead
of advising them, it was just looking at them until they died while the
mouth talked its only child to life and success. We from the entire
Niger Delta especially we Ijaw people and others from the south-south
mobilized to support President Goodluck Jonathan, but the time has come
when silence cannot be golden.
"We must speak out on issues that
are very critical to the survival of our people of the south-south and
the south-east, the political base of Goodluck Jonathan.
"Jonathan is surrounded by very greedy people who are only there to enrich themselves at his expense.
"This
brings us to another Kalabari proverb which says: where there are
elders, a goat cannot be allowed to deliver a kid still tied to a stake.
If we don't talk and we continue to brush the issues aside, tomorrow we
will be blamed and the people will say: but Mujahid Dokubo-Asari was
around when Goodluck Jonathan was president, and he didn't talk, then I
will be seen as both an accomplice and an accessory after the fact."
Asari,
who admitted benefitting from the Jonathan presidency stressed that
whatever benefits he gained are not enough to make him keep quiet.
"I
have benefited immensely from Goodluck Jonathan but benefits alone are
not enough to make me keep quiet when the period is very challenging for
our people," he added.
On the face-off between Jonathan and
former president Olusegun Obasanjo, Asari said: "First, there was no
need whatsoever for Goodluck Jonathan, to disagree with Obasanjo. I
don't like Obasanjo, I don't like his face, I hate him, but he was
instrumental in bringing Goodluck Jonathan to power. And the greedy
people around Jonathan have not managed him well enough to the extent
that they allowed him to disagree with Obasanjo publicly.
"And if you
check, all those who supported Jonathan and fought to bring him to
power have openly disagreed with him; but one should ask what the causes
of these disagreements were, these are the questions we want the
president to tell us."
Asari, the former president of the Ijaw
Youth Council (IYC), expressed his misgivings saying the current
situation around the president might deny the south-south zone an
uninterrupted occupation of the presidency.
Giving reasons he
said: "It is alarming because the south-south must have its
uninterrupted constitutional eight years tenure but with the way things
are going under Jonathan's watch, we are afraid we may not be able to
have our eight years because there will be no magic about it if it is
going to be one man one vote.
"Some people say Obasanjo is
manipulating Goodluck Jonathan, that is why Jonathan is disagreeing with
him, and we ask: what has the Goodluck Jonathan government achieved to
show that it is a departure from other governments that have existed
since 1956? For us, nothing has changed. It is still business as usual.
So what is the advice that Obasanjo gave to Jonathan that is so
difficult for him to fulfill that made him decide to fall out with
Obasanjo?
"Obasanjo was instrumental and manipulated the process
that illegally removed Diepreye Alamieyeseigha as governor of Bayelsa
State and installed Jonathan as governor, made him vice president,
fought for him not only to become acting president to become president
of Nigeria as well.
"Apart from Obasanjo, there are so many
people who supported Goodluck Jonathan; some have been pushed out by
those who were not there to give him any support, while some others have
been trapped and they cannot talk.
"Monkey no fine, but the mama
like am, but when the ugly monkey becomes so rascally, the mother will
desert it because if the mother continues to like the ugly monkey in its
rascality, she too will die with the ugly monkey, after all she has
more than one monkey child."
Assessing members of Jonathan's
cabinet, some of whom he said have failed to perform their duties, Asari
added: "So, some of us are tempted to ask this question: why are all
these things happening? Why has the president allowed some ministers
like Godsday Orubebe to continue in government? Every day people die on
the east-west road, if Orubebe is incompetent as he has shown himself to
be, he should be removed. Nobody voted for Orubebe. And why is Orubebe
so important to the president that he can't remove him even in the face
of his obvious incompetence and several allegations of corruption.”
Asari
admitted that he was among those who lobbied for Orubebe to be
appointed as minister but: "We feel very ashamed and embarrassed.
Orubebe was one of us, he was attending meetings with us, sleeping on
the ground with us, entering the night bus with us, and we nominated him
to be appointed a minister; we have visited and complained to him that
we don't like they way things are going on in his ministry, and told him
that if the president leaves in 2015 without the completion of the
east-west road, we are finished but the man kept telling us there is no
money. When IBB was there, there was money, when Abacha was there, there
was money, when other people were there, there was money, how come the
money disappeared when Jonathan got there. Jonathan and Orubebe will
account for the deaths on the east-west road," he concluded.
Credit: The Will
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