JONATHAN VOWED TO SERVE SINGLE TERM, OBASANJO INSISTS

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has restated his opposition to the second term bid of President Goodluck Jonathan, insisting that the president is reneging on his promise before the 2011 elections to serve only one term.

“President Jonathan said, not only once, twice, publicly, not only inside Nigeria, outside Nigeria, that he would have one term, and said that to me,” a report Wednesday by Bloomberg quoted Obasanjo as saying in an interview in London.

Jonathan has been in power since his predecessor, President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua died in office in 2010. When he won in 2011, he broke an unwritten convention within the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to rotate power between the South and the North. Jonathan, 56, has not yet said whether he would stand for re-election in a vote scheduled for 2015.
“One of the things that is very important in the life of any man or any person, is that he will be a man or a person of his word,” Obasanjo said. “If you decide your word should not be taken seriously that’s entirely up to you.”

Presidential spokesman, Dr. Reuben Abati, couldn’t be reached on his mobile phone for comment as it was switched off.
Obasanjo, who backed Jonathan’s presidential campaign four years ago, declined to say whether Jonathan should or should not stand for re-election.
Source: Thisday