STOP APPEASING NORTH, MIDDLE BELT TELLS JONATHAN

Middle Belt Consensus Forum, MBCF, has asked President Goodluck Jonathan to remain focused and stop pandering to the dictates of the purported “core North”, saying that it was clear that they were not ready to support him.
After its strategic meeting in Abuja on Saturday night, the MBCF noted that the strategy of appeasing the so-called core North had failed to achieve meaningful result, stressing that the olive branch extended to some key political figures in the North by President Jonathan had not being reciprocated.
In a communiqué issued at the end of its meeting and signed by its National Coordinator, Mr. Bitrus Maisamari, the group said the core northern political elements were only interested in their mission of defeating President Jonathan at all cost.
The group noted that President Jonathan’s only crime was that, being eligible, he contested the 2011 elections, adding that “he is still eligible to contest the 2015 elections. We make bold to state here that no northern leader has performed better than President Jonathan, and considering the very difficult challenges he has faced from a section of the country that vowed to make Nigeria ungovernable, we give him a 70 per cent pass mark and hereby declare our support for him to run in 2015 presidential elections.”
According to Maisamari, “President Jonathan, against the counsel of some well-meaning Nigerians, including the former Emir of Gwandu, Alhaji Mustapha Jokolo, appointed Gen. Aliyu Gusau as Minister of Defence, with the hope that the North will accept him.”
Jokolo had in an interview with a national daily on March 23, 2014 warned President Jonathan to beware of Gen. Gusau, alleging that he creates more problems for the country.
Maisamari continued: “Once more we will like to quote Jokolo: ‘This is not a question of what I suspect, Aliyu Mohammed Gusau is an ambitious person. Remember I told you he is funding the Northern Elders Forum. Also remember that I told you he has assembled some Muslim clerics under the umbrella of AMIN. What is he doing with all these, if he doesn’t have an agenda? Listen to statements from the Northern Elders Forum. Are there not always attack on government, and that it is the turn of the North to rule?”
Source: Nigerian Pilot