President Goodluck Jonathan may
have an uphill task in winning the 2015 presidential election, if he decides to
contest: there are indications that the north will not voted for him. Former speaker of the House of
Representatives and a staunch supporter of the president in the run-up to the
2011 general elections, Alhaji Ghali Umar Na’Abba, has declared that the north
would not vote for President Jonathan in 2015 “because he did lots of things
wrong to the North”.
The former speaker, who spoke
exclusively to LEADERSHIP SUNDAY, declared thus: ‘The way President
Jonathan has been handling the party, there is a wide gap between him and
northerners. And I am afraid that northerners will not return him to power
again, because he did lots of things wrong to the north. The feeling is very
strong against him.”
Asked if he foresees the
possibility of the north stopping Jonathan from clinching a second term in
office, Na’Abba responded: ‘It is very possible because, right now in the
north, the feeling is that Jonathan is not worth voting for. People feel that
most of the people who supported him didn’t have the moral laxity to go
and canvass for votes for Jonathan in the north. Those whose houses were burnt
during the electoral violence have not been compensated. Lots of people do not
have faith in him.”
Asked if he had any regrets
supporting the president in the 2011 general elections, Na’Abba said that he
was concerned about unfulfilled promises especially to the north.
He said: ‘When he was a candidate,
what he often told us was that he would give attention to agriculture. And as a
northerner, I am very passionate about agriculture. My regret is that I have
not seen any northern farmer who is happy as a result of anything Jonathan’s
agriculture policy has brought to him. But I hope before the end of his tenure,
he is going to fulfil his promises.
Otherwise, it will make it very
difficult for some of us to support him again.”
Na’Abba who was the speaker of the
House of Representatives from 1999 -2003 was a victim of the post- 2011
election violence: he lost his properties in Kano. Reflecting on the incident,
he attributed it to his support for President Jonathan.
“It was because I supported
Jonathan then. And it was because he was the candidate of my party and as a
leader, it will not augur well for us to begin to cross from one political
party to another. Another time a northerner will be the flag-bearer of the
party; do we expect people from Bayelsa State to vote for us?”
On the most challenging period of
his stewardship as the speaker of the House of Representatives, Na’Abba said
that it was the period the House commenced impeachment proceedings against the
then president Olusegun Obasanjo.
‘The most challenging moment was
the time the National Assembly was going to impeach President Obasanjo. For
four months, between August and November 2002 when the matter was eventually
dropped, it was not easy because I was seen to be the arrow-head. I was seen to
be the mobiliser and orchestrator. My office and residence became a beehive of
activities with different people coming to persuade me to tell the National
Assembly to drop the matter.
“It was not easy because it was
not really my plan. It was a National Assembly issue. Of course, I took an
active part in whatever happened because I believed that Nigeria would have
been much better without Obasanjo,” Na’Abba remarked.
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