South-South, Middle Belt elders endorse Jonathan for 2015

Elders from South-South and Middle Belt comprising North Central and North East zones on Monday endorsed President Goodluck Jonathan for the 2015 presidential election.

The elders led by two elder statesmen, Edwin Clark, and former Senate President, Ameh Ebute, met closed door with Jonathan at the State House in Abuja.

Clark, who addressed State House correspondents after the meeting, said members of the group under the aegis of Congress for Equality and Change, were drawn from 19 states.

“We have an organisation known as Congress for Equality and Change, everybody in Nigeria is equal to the other, nobody is superior or inferior to the other.

“There must be changes in this country; we have to move forward, we have been living in a country where we have been building bridges between the various groups.

“There are minority groups, there are majority groups and unless we understand one another, it will be difficult for us to survive as a country,” he said.

Clark said the group was opposed to a position in some quarters that Jonathan was not eligible to run for the 2015 election.

“You know very well that I will never lead a group that will be opposed to 2015, not because Clark is saying so.

“It is written in the constitution of Nigeria. Shagari did so, Obasanjo did so. Shagari’s second term was taken over by a military man.

“Today, he (the military man) wants to be president. He staged a coup in 1983; I was also a senator at that time.

“When it came to Obasanjo, he did eight years under the constitution and some of my northern friends have said all they said was a second term for Shagari.

“If Jonathan wants thereafter, he could do so. If Shagari was entitled to two terms, why not Jonathan or is it because he is a minority”, he said.

Clark said the group consisted of minorities of the Middle Belt and South-South that came together in 2010 during the debate on whether Jonathan could become an acting president or not.

“We thought to oppose that which is very clear from the constitution of this country was an injustice and unfair.

“For us to survive in this country, anybody who is qualified to be president whether he is a minority or a majority must be given the opportunity.