October 29, 2017
Former President Goodluck Jonathan
The Ijaw Youth Council Worldwide has called on the Federal Government to leave former President Goodluck Jonathan and his family alone.
The IYC also urged their kinsmen to resist any move to harass and embarrass Jonathan or members of his family over trumped-up charges.
The group spoke against the backdrop of court’s subpoena on Jonathan to appear as a defence witness in a case involving a former National Publicity Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party, Mr. Oliseh Metuh.
The spokesman for the IYC, Mr. Daniel Dasimaka, said the attention of the group was drawn to alleged attempts by some individuals in the Muhammadu Buhari administration to ridicule former President Goodluck Jonathan.
Dasimaka said in a statement on Saturday that such persons in the Buhari’s government felt that the best way to abdicate responsibility for any wrong committed by anyone or institution was to drag Jonathan’s name into it.
He recalled that in the last one month, several attempts were made to implicate Jonathan in various scandals such as the State House Clinic scandal, which his (Jonathan’s) administration was not responsible for the implementation of the 2015 budget.
Dasimaka also expressed worry over what he described as attempts to blame the former president for the reinstatement and promotion of the ex-Chairman of the Presidential Task Force on Pension Reforms, Abdulrasheed Maina.
He said the revelation of both Maina’s immediate family and other prominent northerners had absolved Jonathan’s administration of any involvement as they claimed that it was the President Buhari’s government that orchestrated Maina’s reinstatement.
The IYC spokesman noted, “It is against this background that the IYC is calling on all Nigerians to wake up, see through the machinations of Buhari’s government and resist the latest attempt to denigrate Jonathan.
“We are not against the wheels of justice turning smoothly in the determination of cases by the judiciary. What we are against is the politicisation of judicial process by trying to blackmail Jonathan or any citizen.’’
Meanwhile, the Ijaw Youth Council has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to embark on the overhaul of his cabinet by flushing out corrupt individuals.
IYC President, Mr. Eric Omare, who made this call on Saturday in a telephone interview with SUNDAY PUNCH, added that some of those working with Buhari did not share his vision on the need to be upright.
Omare argued that the President could not claim to be fighting corruption while people around him were swimming in graft.
“If the President actually has a vision to fight corruption, the people around him have not keyed into it. He must work with people who believe in his vision to fight corruption. If the anti-corruption crusade of President Buhari must make any impact, the President must start by carrying out a massive overhaul of the people around him. That means he must sack some key officials of his government found to be corrupt for Nigerians to take him seriously,” he said.
Omare added that it should not take eternity for a suspected corrupt government official to be exposed, adding that the delay in investigating and punishing corrupt officials was making a mess of the anti-graft campaign of the current administration.
He stated, “He is the President and Commander-in-Chief of Nigeria and everything stops on his table. There is nobody that is too big for the President to deal with.
“In any case, whether he succeeds or not, nobody will remember Malami, nobody will remember Dambazzau; it is his name that will be in history.
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