The Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) has again noted with regret the un-meritorious state of Nigeria under the leadership of President Good-luck Jonathan. The Jonathan regime seeks to farm out the Nation as a fiefdom for gratifying the whims and caprices of the President and his wife!
The intractable crisis in Rivers state, undoubtedly stoked by the bellicosity of the first family, remains blight in the unenviable tenure of the Jonathan regime thus far. The recent Freudian slip from Mrs. Patience Good-luck-Jonathan as the raison d’etre for her pugnacious stance against peaceful governance in Rivers state is a real cause for concern. It further revealed a four-year incubation of a dastardly plot by the President’s wife to destabilize a federating unit within a Federal state! The partisanship of the Nigeria Police – under Mr. Mohammed Abubakar- is a huge reversal of whatever gains that had been made in the Police since the end of the second republic in 1983. It was in the second republic (1979-1983) that the police was used as a tool by the Federal Government in undermining the federating states within the Nigerian state. We recall how the old Anambra state commissioner of Police, Mr. Bishop Eyitene, was planted as a thorn in the flesh of the state governor, Mr. Jim Nwobodo. What is playing out in Rivers state seems, to us at CPC, as a rehash of that unfortunate narrative. The current leadership of the Nigeria Police has shown such partisanship that betrays its complicity in the exacerbation of the Rivers crisis. The invitation for questioning of Mr. Chidi Lloyd, the majority leader, and the security details of the Rivers State Governor without a concomitant invitation to the infamous five legislators that purportedly sat (in an inquorate manner) to impeach a speaker installed by a 32-member Assembly, only showed a Police leadership that is not willing to assert its autonomy under the meddlesomeness of a bumbling and fumbling Presidency. As a Party, we have also noted last week’s reshuffling of the security aides around the Rivers Governor, Mr Rotimi Amaechi, without his knowledge – a practice that runs foul against decency and apolitical professionalism!
As a Party, we have noted that the greatest tragedy of the Nigerian state is being under the leadership of a President with unlearned lessons on basic leadership. We applaud the sagacity of the Nigerian Senate in jettisoning the self-serving single six-year tenure proposal by the Presidency. Indeed, the National Assembly members, as the representatives of the people, heeded the voice of reason. Once again, we call on the National Assembly to wield the big stick of impeachment, if necessary, in restoring normalcy and order to Rivers state.
God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
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Rotimi Fashakin (Engr.)
National Publicity Secretary, CPC.
(Sunday, July 21, 2013 ).
