The Northern Elders’ Forum (NEF) has said that it would continue to support Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (rtd) in the forthcoming general elections.
The forum’s chairman, Prof. Ango Abdullahi, said at a news briefing in Zaria, Kaduna state, that their support was due to the “unfair and unjust manner” the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) had treated the region.
He said: “In 2011 some people, including some governors, supported Jonathan to contest; it was a disrespect for the party’s constitution, and in 2015 they brought him as a sole candidate.
“This forum is agitating for a candidate from the North and no party has fulfilled such condition except the All Progressives Congress (APC).”
Abdullahi, a former vice-chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, said as a founding member of the PDP, he knew better than anybody what happened before the election of Jonathan.
He explained that the PDP and Jonathan have succeeded in killing the people of the North and would continue to do so if elected again. He assured that nobody from the North would vote for the PDP.
He accused Jonathan of allocating N639 billion worth of contracts to his geo-political zone in 2015, which was greater than the amount allocated to the other five geo-political zones.
According to him, “Jonathan’s campaign has been ethnically and religiously divisive. Therefore, it is high time for Nigerians to make the right choice because poor leadership has ruined the country.”
Commenting on Wednesday’s statement credited to Jonathan that some elder statesmen were touts, Abdullahi said the president shouldn’t have made such abusive statement on the nation’s statesmen who fought for the unity of the country he now enjoys.
According to him, “President Jonathan should know that in a motor park, there are touts and there are pick-pockets, so if some past leaders are touts, some sitting leaders are pick-pockets and thieves. So, you have to make your pick from that.
“This country is complaining about corruption and the president himself has said that stealing is a small corruption. And so, for him to even come around and refer to some people as touts, he should remember that some of them sitting there are pick-pockets and some of them are even worse than pick-pockets.
“Pick-pockets in a motor park cheat the passengers as well as the owner of the vehicles, while the touts do some work for a commission.
“So, you see, these are some of the things that are clearly pointing to the fact that the incompetence that we have been complaining about is the additional basis of rejecting the man’s leadership in 2015. It is now clearly showing across the country.
“It used to be Northern Elders Forum who are seen as partisan, sectional, divisive and so on. Whenever we say something, it was misconstrued as outright opposition against the government or against the president, …but thank God, the truth will always be one.
“People across the country today seem to have agreed that this is an incompetent government that is about to wreck or completely ruin this country, and the sooner Nigerians come to grips with this, the better.”
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