Jonathan’s National Confab A Sham – Northern Elders

The Northern Elders Forum, NEF, Thursday, resolved not to be part of the forthcoming National Conference proposed by President Goodluck Jonathan, saying that it had been programmed to project the president’s re-election bid.

The elders, who met in Abuja to review the state of the nation, also decried the seeming inability of the Federal Government to tackle the escalating level of terrorism in the North, which they noted, had caused a lot of havoc and dislocation in the region.
Speaking with journalists, NEF Deputy Leader, Dr. Paul Unongo, made it clear that although the North was part of the agitation for a Sovereign National Conference, it became wary of a hidden agenda when the government suddenly opted to organize one with a premeditated agenda that could cause more confusion rather than provide solutions to the nation’s challenges.

Unongo pointed out that the impending conference would not be able to solve any problem for Nigeria because most of the delegates were selected by the president instead of allowing Nigerians to elect their delegates to the conference as proposed by the Senator Femi Okurounmu-led Presidential Committee on National Dialogue.
Unongo pointed out: “What they are going to do is not a national conference but a Jonathan conference because almost all the delegates were selected by him and his friends instead of an open election that was adopted for the previous exercises even during the military era.
“This is not fair. The manner of selecting only the friends and associates of the President for the conference does not represent the generality of Nigerians and we cannot be part of such a sham”, the former minister said.
While commiserating with the government over the killings in the North, Unongo called on the present administration to take whatever steps necessary to flush the terrorists, whom he said did not represent any religion in the country, as claimed by some ignorant persons.