– Odia Ofemun spoke about Nigeria’s restructuring plan
– The poet said he battle for oil was the reason for the problem Jonathan had with the north
– He noted that private agreement should not over rid the constitution
Odia Ofeimun has said that the reason the north was against Goodluck Jonathan’s re-election in 2015 was due to oil bloc.
In an interview with vanguard, Ofeimun spoke about the issue of restructuring the country and how Nigeria has fared so far.
He said: “I see restructuring as a change in the spatial arrangements by which we are governed. It calls forth the necessity to have protected and defended cultural and economic geographies for the exercise of power. The point is to bring it all down to the level of serious interactive discourses so that it is not left simply in the hands of those defenders of the people’s interests who, being human, can sometimes stumble and fall in the course of waging the good fight to right the wrongs of our time.”
Ofeimun also spoke about the problem Jonathan had with the north was because of oil bloc.
He said: “Let’s put a finger on it: It was not just because there was an agreement inside the PDP that only a northerner could take over from Umaru Yar’adua. Even if there was, a private arrangement in a political party should never have been considered fit to overawe a national constitution.
Former President Goodluck Jonathan
“To concede office to the Vice President after the death of President Yar’adua, should have been automatic for true patriots. The more plausible rationale for not doing so was that all former Presidents of Nigeria, and shadowy cabals around them, wanted to have their leg in the door for the next round of bidding for oil blocks.
“They could not trust a leader of minority extraction, whose siblings were sitting with explosives on the ready, on top of the oil reserves, to do it in their own interest.
“President Goodluck Jonathan himself, not being a child of the bride’s chamber in his party, really could not have had any clue as to what the hullaballoo was all about. His trying to be his own man, as the whole country obviously expected, was at the heart of the crisis.
“No one knew this better than former President Obasanjo whose inability to put strings on either Yar’ Adua or Yar’ Adua’s successor, was his core reason for wanting to build a national constituency to oust a President regarded by many as his protégé. President Jonathan was so very snidely, and so quickly, slapped with being clueless in a way that was meant to de-legitimate him before he could do any damage to his putative minders after the Doctrine of Necessity that brought him to power.
“This was compounded by those who knew that this President of minority extraction, who was already putting his foot down to hold a National Conference even before he was sworn in, was not averse to restructuring the Federation.”
“Yes, in spite of Goodluck Jonathan’s wily naivety, they knew. Another way of saying this is that the split that led a large Arewa bloc to exit from the Peoples Democratic Party was, properly speaking, a move in the war to restructure or not to restructure the Nigerian Federation.
“The big salvo about Jonathan’s cluelessness had taken off within that famous oil war, the occupy Nigeria episode, in which many people fought against their country while imagining that they were protesting against a clue-less President.
“Along the way, while President Jonathan was literally bending over backward, through appointments and projects sited in the North, to win back the masses from those who had left his party, the leader of the pack, former President Olusegun Obasanjo, zeroed in.”
Source:
http://nigeriabreakingnews.com.ng/why-the-north-was-strongly-against-jonathan-in-2015/
Topic: Why the north was strongly against Jonathan in 2015 (Read 1197 times)
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October 25, 2017, 01:09:58 AM