OPEN LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA, DR. G.E.A. JONATHAN: CANCEL ADAMAWA PDP PRIMARIES
I write as a human rights activist. I have no intention to hurt the feelings of Nuhu Ribadu or his allies. Infact, I led a team of political socialites, not activists, to visit Ribadu when he contested for Presidency in 2011 General elections in his office at Maitama Abuja. I wrote the script read to him. I was there live. He should know me personally. We have been greeting on phone since then. So, I am not too foreign to Nuhu Ribadu.
But as an activist, I can never mortgage my conscience to support anybody sheepishly. It is a matter of probity not familiarity. What happened in Adamawa PDP primaries is an eyesore to sanctity. Nuhu Ribadu and allies swooped horses in midstream, changed the venue of the election, shifted it to far away Abuja, about 10-hours drive from Yola the Capital. Constitutionally, the primaries for Guber elections are meant to hold at the State headquarters unless there is supervening impossibility. Such impossibility must be communicated adequately to all the parties timely and judiciously.
The proponents to the Kangaroo election would easily adduce bokoharam imbroglio to justify their hoopla. But was that adequately communicated timely and judiciously to ALL the delegates? Again the pindown on bokoharam exigencies could tantamount to a surreptitious intent to hack on abnormality to set the cat before the horse. The security men are there to safeguard the venue. How can bokoharam penetrate?
It appears to me that Mr. President is hell-bent on picking Ribadu willy-nilly against the mindset of Adamawas for some undefined pecuniary interests. Otherwise, how could the venue for the election be post-poned not however sinedie, but in camera. Why and what for?
Aberration lasting a year becomes a norm as Igbo proverb says. It is now or never that the PDP National leader in the person of Dr. Goodluck Jonathan should stamp feet on ground to cancel state primaries that were clear hoodwinks on both terrestrial and celestial sanctity to reposition Nigeria for Olympian height. Do it now Mr. President.
Innocent J.K.O. (Comrade) (Innocent Jonah Kindness O.) National Co-ordinator, Human Rights Organizations' Coalition of Nigeria – HUROCON
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