Northern Youths Drum Support For President Jonathan

….RECALLS AGE-LONG POLITICAL ALLIANCE BETWEEN THE NORTHERN AND SOUTH-SOUTH REGIONS

….SAYS PROPAGANDA AGAINST RE-ELECTION OF JONATHAN IS BEING ORCHESTRATED BY ELITES FOR SELFISH REASONS

With less than a month to the 2015 general elections, a socio-political group, Northern Youth Movement for Positive Change (NYMPC) has joined other well-meaning Nigerians to drum up support for the re-election bid of President Goodluck Jonathan, urging Nigerians to jettison ethno-religious sentiments for the progress of the country.

Led by its Chairman, Barr. Joseph Mekwunye, the 7-member delegation of the group, which comprises youths from across the 19 Northern states made its position known during a courtesy visit to the Bayelsa State Governor, Hon. Seriake Dickson in Government House, Yenagoa.

In an interview with Government House correspondents shortly after the visit, Co-ordinator and Secretary of the NYMPC, Mr. David Glavda said, the group was throwing its weight behind the President, given his outstanding performance in virtually all sectors of the economy.

He listed the achievements of President Jonathan to include education, transportation, infrastructural development, Youth empowerment (YouWin), improvement in the agricultural sector and the economy.

Going down memory lane, Mr. Glavda highlighted the political alliance between the South-South and Northern geo-political zones of the country as being instrumental to the enthronement of Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa and Alhaji Shehu Shagari as Prime Minister and President of the country at different times.

His words: “Northern Nigeria and the South-South have been traditionally allies in nation-building; at independence. It was the people from the South-South that assisted the Northern Peoples Congress, (NPC) a Northern based political party to form a government, which was led by Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa.

“Coming to 1979, during the Presidential elections, Unity Party of Nigeria, UPN, which was an opposition party and the National Party of Nigeria, NPN were neck to neck at the poll. It was the votes that came from the people of old Rivers State, which comprised the present Bayelsa and Rivers States that enabled Alhaji Shehu Shagari to become the President of Nigeria. So, why should we allow ourselves to retrogress instead of moving forward?

Mr. Glavda, who emphasized the need for Northerners not to allow propaganda and primordial ethnic considerations to becloud their sense of patriotism in their choice of who becomes the next president, urged them to support the re-election bid of President Jonathan.

According to him, the Northern region has benefitted immensely in terms of appointments, agriculture and tackling the vexed issue of street urchins (the Almajiri system), arguing that, the President has out-performed all his predecessors in the midst of unprecedented security challenges in the history of the country.

“When you look at the Nigerian political landscape, particularly the 6 principal officers in the country, you find that the Vice President is a Northerner, Senate President is from the North, even the Speaker of the House of Representatives is a Northerner. When you come to the other arm of government; the Judiciary, the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Inspector General of Police and the PDP National Chairman are all Northerners. This is the kind of symbiotic relationship that a nation should have in order for it to move forward; so for anyone to come and start preaching politics of hatred and calumny is wrong, because that is not in the constitution of the country.  As a group, we consider that as an aberration.

“Therefore, we from the North, particularly, the youths, we feel, we should lend our voice to talk about our perspective as regards the 2015 elections. Forget about the prejudice or propaganda that is going on in the country, which is being engineered by the elites simply for their selfish reasons to institute a puppet on the throne that they will be able to control.

Continuing, he said “all these noise against President Jonathan today that Nigerians are hearing is simply, because he tries to be independent to a large extent. Unfortunately, Obasanjo and other people in the country feel that, it is not the way to go but, that is wrong, because Nigeria is greater than any individual interest, so we should wake up to move Nigeria forward.

Daniel Iworiso-Markson
Chief Press Secretary to the Governor of Bayelsa State

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