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• Kaita may face treasonable felony charge

•Nowhere is safe again, says Chris Okotie

•ACN to President: Your credibility at stake

Ayodele Adegbuyi, Abuja, Ted Odogwu, Kano & Victor Oriola

FORTY-EIGHT hours after the plot by the North to destabilise Nigeria, if a Southerner emerges as the President next year was revealed, prominent politicians yesterday described it as a threat to national security.

On Monday, former governor of the old Kaduna State, Alhaji Lawan Kaita, vowed that the North would make the country ungovernable, if President Goodluck Jonathan wins the 2011 presidential elections.

He said: “It is becoming apparent that the recent replacement of Service Chiefs is part of President Jonathan’s plan to use state apparatus to scale the 2011 presidential hurdle. Anything short of a Northern President is tantamount to stealing our Presidency. Jonathan has to go and he will go. Even if he uses the incumbency power to get his nomination on the platform of the PDP, he would be frustrated out.

“The North is determined, if that happens, to make the country ungovernable for President Jonathan or any other Southerner who finds his way to the seat of power on the platform of the PDP against the principle of the party’s zoning policy.”

The leader of the pan-Yoruba socio-political organisation, Afenifere, Chief Reuben Fasoranti; constitutional lawyer, Prof. Itse Sagay; Second Republic Governor of old Kaduna State, Alhaji Balarabe Musa and the National Coordinator of the Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC), Otunba Gani Adams, all condemned the statement.

Sagay described Kaita’s outburst as “a threat to peace and national security.”

He said: “It is unbecoming of a former governor of Kaita’s status to be inciting the people against the Presidency.

“It is a threat to peace and national security. He should be arrested and charged appropriately. People like that should be investigated, especially now with this act of terrorism in Nigeria.”

Fasoranti maintained that it was unfair for Kaita to resort to blackmail “over an issue that is within the PDP internal arrangement.”

His words: “What he is saying is not in our constitution. It is the internal arrangement of the PDP. It is only meant to incite people. People should not behave as if we are in a military era. We should allow the best candidate that would be able to run the country emerge through free and fair elections, instead of wiping up sentiment about the controversial zoning.”

To Balarabe Musa, Kaita has no right whatsoever to speak for the whole North on the issue.

Musa, who explained that the problem of Nigeria was not North/South dichotomy, counselled Kaita to speak for himself “and not drag the entire North into the PDP zoning brouhaha.”

He said: “I don’t think any individual has the right to speak for the whole North. The problem of Nigeria is not North/South dichotomy. It is the problem of good governance and how to deliver democracy dividends to the people.

“Everybody knows that if the North is united on an issue, definitely, that will be a national issue, not a sectional one as portrayed by Kaita. He should speak for himself and not the entire North.”

Adams also advised Kaita to be very careful about any statement capable of causing problem in the country.

The OPC leader averred that the Niger Delta where Jonathan hails from produces oil which is the mainstay of Nigeria’s economy.

He explained that though his group (OPC) would not support any candidate, he, however, declared: “There is no law in the country stopping Jonathan from contesting the forthcoming election.”

Meanwhile, the Nigerian Compass learnt yesterday that Kaita may be charged with treasonable felony.

Jonathan, who spoke through the spokesman of his campaign organisation, Sully Abu, yesterday said that Kaita must be ready to keep a date with the law.

“We are afterall a country governed by laws, and the laws of treason are very clear in this regard.”

Abu refuted the claim that Jonathan absolved the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) of complicity in the Abuja bombings.

“When President Goodluck Jonathan, during a visit to the National Hospital to commiserate with victims of the bombing, said the terrorist act should not merely be ascribed to MEND, what he was simply saying was that nobody should use the name of any organisation to cover up a heinous crime. “He was not absolving MEND or any other group of blame or culpability.”

In Kano yesterday, members of Ndigbo, under the aegis of Eastern Peoples Forum (EPF), expressed their total support for Jonathan’s ambition, saying that they are solidly behind him to realise his ambition.

The message was printed in posters and circulated round the ancient city with the title: “Never again shall we be deceived.”

The forum explained that Ndigbo would not contest the presidential election, as a result of their deliberate and collective decision to back Jonathan, whom they described as one of their own.

Said the forum: “The Ndigbo from the South-East is an integral part of the South-South and, as such, the interest of Ndigbo extends to the South-South because whatever happens to the South-South automatically affects the Ndigbo, so, it is logical that in the absence of any aspirant from the South East, running for the Presidency in 2011, the Ndigbo will support any credible and capable candidate from the South-South.”

In view of the principles of zoning and rotation of the Presidency as adopted by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the forum maintained that the contest for the Presidency in 2015 is still open to candidates from those zones, which have not produced a President, in accordance with the prevailing zoning and rotation in the party.

The forum advanced an argument that if Jonathan wins in 2011 and by 2015, all other zones, except the South-East, would have governed the country for only four years, thereby narrowing the number of zones, having similar deprivation as the South-East, “the South-East will strongly bid for the Presidency of Nigeria in 2015 for equity and justice and will not depend on one individual to promise what he doesn’t even have”.

“As a result of this development, the Ndigbo must begin to repair the cracks in their historical, cultural and political relationship, with peoples of the South-South and indeed all other zones, so as to win their sympathy and support towards their resolute bid for Presidency in 2015, despite some external-induced forces between the two zones.

“The bottom line is that the lopsidedness in occupation of the seat of President of Nigeria since independence, is that one obvious fact remains that the longest occupant of the Presidential Villa is asking for another four years and urging the least occupant to wait for another four years to have a taste of the action.

“This scenario is the case of a well-fed person, asking the hungry person to surrender his food to him and wait for another ration. What then is the guarantee that when that ration comes, he will indeed surrender it? “Never shall we be deceived again.

“Our acceptance and support for President Jonathan is a test case to demonstrate whether this country belongs to all, indeed a test case for not only the unity and stability of this country but also for the survival of Nigeria.”

Speaking on the controversy surrounding the Abuja bomb blasts which killed 10 people on independence day anniversary, the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) said the allegation by MEND leader, Henry Okah, that a presidential aide called to pressure him to ask the group to withdraw its claim of responsibility for the blasts so the government can blame it on Northerners, has put the credibility of the presidency at stake.

‘’We have read the presidency’s reaction to Okah’s claim, but it has to go beyond that to convince Nigerians and the world that Okah was merely jiving,’’ the party said in a statement yesterday by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed.

‘’Because the allegation is so grave and has dire implication for the country’s stability, we ask the presidency to use diplomatic means to request and obtain from South Africa the call log for Okah in the past week, as a first step in what should be a thorough investigation of the claim. Dismissing it as an ‘outright lie’ by a ‘drowing man’ may not be that effective.

‘’Also, we challenge Okah to identify the presidential aide who called him, if indeed he is not just trying to get back at the presidency with such weighty allegation.

‘’If all these efforts fail, there may be the need to appoint an independent commission of inquiry to investigate the claim, in view of its potentially-destabilising implication.’’

It reiterated its earlier call on the President not to jump to conclusion on the condemnable blasts, and to allow the investigators do a thorough job.

‘’We are reiterating this call because the presidency seems to be insisting that the bombings were not perpetrated by MEND, which sent a message to say the bombs will go off (as they did) and later claimed responsibility, though expressing regret at the loss of lives.

‘’With due respect, the visit to the presidency by some former militant leaders, including repentant MEND commanders, on Tuesday, during which they exonerated MEND, seems to have been choreographed to support the President’s earlier claim.

‘’But we beg to differ, and we have a number of questions to ask: If these men are no longer in MEND, how will they know what is happening in the organisation? If MEND has claimed responsibility, why is the President so eager to exonerate them? Does the President know what the nation does not? If so, at what point did the President know what he knows? If it is before the blasts, why did he not ensure that they were prevented? If it is after, why is he not telling the nation what he knows?

‘’These questions have become pertinent in view of the claim by Okah. There is no doubt that providing answers to the posers will go a long way in shedding more light on the whole issue,’’ ACN said.

In the meantime, the party appealed to Nigerians to keep an open mind while investigators work to unravel the cause and perpetrators of the blasts, and to ensure that passions are not inflamed by the claims and counter-claims, in the interest of the nation’s stability.

Meanwhile, the presidential candidate of FRESH Party, Rev. Chris Okotie, has declared that he has the political will “to confront, arrest and redress intimidating security, power and infrastructural problems” bedeviling the nation if voted into power next year.

Speaking yesterday shortly after launching his nationwide campaign in his office in Ikeja, Lagos, Okotie believed that lack of political will to confront the problems by the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has been the same reason the situation has remained daunting.

“The first desire of every living being is safety. There is nowhere in the country that is safe. The police are not well equipped; they are poorly remunerated and even owed months of salaries.

“Kidnapping, which initially started as a non-profit making protest in the creek of the Niger Delta, has now assumed a frightening dimension nationwide since the PDP-led Federal Government is weak in tackling the security problem.

“Daylight armed robbery on our highways has become a ‘normal’ incident. Also added to this is the fitful electricity supply which has crippled our economic activities. That virtually all manufacturing firms and multinational companies are relocating from Nigeria to neighboring countries like Ghana does not matter to the government of the day. All these anomalies I will address decisively if voted into power,” Okotie said.

He lamented that many roads are in terrible state “just because the government is fond of paying lip service to addressing infrastructural decay in the country”.

Okotie believes that “Nigeria is blessed enough to provide for the needs of her citizens” while blaming the parlous standard of living on inefficient leadership imposed on the masses by the PDP.

The cleric added: “I believe that the time has come for us to migrate from the politics of bitterness to the place of objectivity, inspiration and cohesion. Nigeria needs a man who can rise above the mosaic of vindictive purposelessness and embrace the whole confederacy of the Nigerian brotherhood.

“But Nigeria will rise again. It is time to prioritise the Nigerian above partisan parochialism. The Nigerian is our greatest asset, not oil. It is time to elevate the motivation and development of our people to the level of strategy. It is time to build our people and not things.

“Key actions will be education. I will increase budget on education to 26 per cent in line with the millennium development goals. Health care will be receiving greater budgetary allocation. I will create social security apparatus as a safety net. This will include an overhaul of pension scheme to make it contributory for everyone in employment, revamping the public transportation systems and housing. Thus, we shall emphasise human capital development as our seminal objective.”

Bomb blasts: SSS quizzes Dokpesi again over ‘new developments’

Lateef Ibrahim, Abuja

THE embattled Director-General of Ibrahim Babangida Presidential Campaign Organisation, Chief Raymond Aleogho Dokpesi, was, for the third time yesterday, quizzed by operatives of the State Security Service (SSS) in Abuja.

Dokpesi is being interrogated in connection with the last Friday bomb attacks in Abuja, which claimed 12 lives and left scores of others injured.

The owner of Raypower FM and Africa Independent Television (AIT), who was released about 11p.m. on Tuesday after rigorous questioning, was again summoned about 11a.m. yesterday in view of what his interrogators referred to as “new developments” in their investigation into the blasts.

Dokpesi was at the SSS headquarters on Monday and Tuesday.

Sources said when he first appeared before the security operatives on Monday, he was asked questions relating to how much Babangida has so far released to his campaign organisation, how much he (Dokpesi) was paid for the job he is doing and who will likely emerge as the consensus candidate between Babangida, Atiku Abubakar, Aliyu Gusau and Governor Bukola Saraki of Kwara State.

Already, the Babangida Campaign Organisation has declared that Dokpesi was being punished for refusing to head the campaign organisation of President Goodluck Jonathan for the 2011 presidential elections.

A source at the Babangida Campaign Organisation lamented yesterday that the unending quizzing of Dokpesi was a deliberate ploy “to slow down our campaign and to frustrate us”.

He, however, declared that the organisation would not be deterred, no matter what.