This is the first time ever in Nigeria that a group is killing Nigerians everyday and the government can't seem to do anything tangible to secure the lives of its people. Sadly, the President is more interested in politics.
At a time likes this, it is the opposition that should playing politics while the government gets busy to live up to the expectations of the power they control. Unfortunately, that is not the situation.
President Goodluck Jonathan has said the Peoples Democratic Party is not missing any of its five governors who defected to the All Progressives Congress several months ago. Jonathan said:
“I appreciate the governors. Though some people left us, we’re not noticing their absence.
“When some governors moved and some members of the National Assembly also moved, some people thought they would soon overrun the party, but when I looked across, from my vantage position, I didn’t really see the threat...
“I told the then national chairman (Bamanga Tukur) to let us organise national unity rallies to demonstrate our strength, so that people will know that one or two persons leaving our fold is inconsequential.
“I’m not even sure they can win their wards in an election now, because some of those states are totally PDP states. When you leave and you think you would be leaving with the whole state, by the time you get there, you’ll discover that others stay back and are continuing with the PDP. Some of the governors are even afraid to conduct local government elections.”
President Jonathan said all this and more during the 65th National Executive Committee meeting of the party in Abuja on Thursday. Strangely, only 8 of the 18 PDP governors attended the meeting. 100 stayed away.
Interim National Publicity Secretary of APC, Lai Mohammed, and Adamawa Governor, Murtala Nyako, have both dismissed Jonathan’s comment, saying, “They (President and the PDP) are reeling from the knockout that they suffered.”
The 5 governors who left PDP are Rotimi Amaechi (Rivers); Aliyu Wamakko (Sokoto); Rabiu Kwakwanso (Kano); Murtala Nyako (Adamawa); and Abdulfatah Ahmed (Kwara).
Amaechi, through his Chief of Staff, Tony Okocha, said the President was merely pretending. He explained that what Jonathan said was not out of place because no leader of a political party would raise the alarm that he was losing members.
“The President is only pretending that the PDP is not worried. There is no way the PDP will not be worried that Kano, Sokoto and Rivers, which gave him the bulk votes in 2011 have moved to the APC.
"Remember that Rivers gave the PDP over two million votes. Sokoto and Kano also did same in 2011. Is it not obvious that the President is pretending in order not to create fear in the minds of members of his party?"
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