2015: North’s opposition against Jonathan cracks

by Soni Daniel, Regional Editor, North
…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 twoweeks 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
overthe 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 iscurrently 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
leavingtheir 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 movingaround the country."