Rule For 8-Yrs Or Don’t Return Home To Us, N’Delta Leaders Warn Jonathan

The call on President Goodluck Jonathan to throw his hat in the ring come 2015 Presidential elections was again re-echoed on Wednesday with the Niger Delta Leaders Assembly, NDLA, declaring that it is a must for him to occupy the position for eight years.

The group further warned that should he choose not to contest, he would have truncated the Niger Delta peoples’ aspiration of breaking the ‘jinx’ and therefore should not return home.

Speaking during a courtesy visit to Chief Edwin Clark at his Kiagbodo country home, Delta State, National Chairman of the group, HRM Carson Agidah, said despite the fact that God has made the Niger Delta region the country’s sole benefactor, they have been shortchanged for too long and impoverished by their extreme attention to the needs of other regions of the country.

Said he: We have made the bourgeois of the North, East and West feast on our wealth to the detriment of our children. Our magnanimity is taken for granted; we have been mocked for allowing our wealth to be accessed by all; our generosity has turned to an offence as we are rated as those who do not know the value of their wealth.

“Politically, our region has always been known to be the shopping centre for votes and support to make others President of Nigeria. As far as presidential elections are concerned, we have never been qualified to be voted for.”

However, the group said this time around, it was set to reverse the tide as they have chosen President Jonathan as their candidate for the 2015 presidential election.

According to Agidah, “It is a must for President Jonathan to re-contest in 2015. Should he refuse to re-contest the 2015 presidential election, he should not return home after retirement”.

Assuring the president of the South South’s support for his candidature, the group, which claimed to be speaking on behalf of all Niger Deltans, noted that “if Mr President turns down this offer, he would succeed in establishing a fact and precedence for posterity that we in the Niger Delta have never been qualified to be voted for twice as stipulated by the Nigerian Constitution. It is in view of this that we describe the return of Jonathan to Aso Rock in 2015 as a-must-do project for the people of the Niger Delta.”