Ijaw Youths Tackle Obasanjo Over Letter To Jonathan

UDENGS ERADIRI

Ijaw youths on Friday frowned at the controversial letter written to President Goodluck Jonathan by former President Olusegun Obasanjo, saying it was capable of heating up the already heated polity.

The youths under the aegis of the Ijaw Youth Council (IYC) also accused Mr. Obasanjo of writing his letter – Before It Is Too Late – in bad faith.
The Ijaw youths said that the barrage of attacks directed at President Jonathan could destroy the country.
President of the IYC, Udengs Eradiri, who addressed journalists in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, asked the former president to carry out a self-appraisal before making provocative and spurious comments.
He said Mr. Obasanjo was wrong to have associated Jonathan with violence, adding that it was not in the character of Ijaw people to take delight in killing people.
Mr. Obasanjo in his letter had alleged that snipers were being trained to eliminate perceived political opponents among other weighty allegations.
But Eradiri said Mr. Obasanjo wrote out of deep-seated animosity, claiming that the ex-President was determined to pull Jonathan down.
He said: “In this country, leaders who see that others will surpass them; they will decide to drag him down and that is what is playing out in the case of Obasanjo’s letter to Jonathan.
“The achievements that Jonathan has put on the table will be difficult for any other president to surpass in the country. But he is a man who does not know how to blow his trumpet”.
Eradiri maintained that no amount of campaign of calumny against Mr. Jonathan will stop his second term ambition come 2015.
He said the President should be allowed to enjoy second term in office like his predecessors, including Mr. Obasanjo who ruled from 1999-2007.