Ladies and Gentlemen,
This World Press Conference is organized by the Concerned
Stakeholders from the various quarters and local government areas of
Anambra North Senatorial District of Anambra State of Nigeria, in reaction to
the publications in The Nation and other national
newspapers of Saturday, Nov. 8th, 2014, captioned – Senate
Race: President Jonathan concedes tickets to 40 senators.
First of all, we wish to express our total support
and confidence in Mr. President’s transformation agenda and wish him well. It
is an age-long fact that one does not easily change a focused and performing
team while a non-performer can never be perpetuated. Mr. President through his
transformation programmes has not only changed the face and image of Nigeria
but has brought prosperity, respect, rule of law and positive progression to a
once beleaguered nation.
Above all, Mr. President has shown himself to be a
true brother of ours. He has positively impacted on the Ndigbo and we must
support him to continue in 2015. Now, President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan has
achieved these underlisted for the Ndigbo in his first 4-year tenure:
1.
Appointed an Igbo son General Onyeabo Azubike
Ihejirika as Chief of Army Staff.
2.
Appointed an Ibusa-born Admiral Dele Ezeoba as
Chief of Naval Staff.
3.
Appointed Senator Anyiam Pius Anyiam as Secretary
to the Government of the Federation.
4.
Appointed Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala as
Coordinating Minister of the Economy and Minister of Finance.
5.
Commenced the construction of the 2nd Niger
Bridge.
6.
Approved and completed the 1st International
Airport, Akanu Ibiam International Airport in the heart of Igboland.
7.
Remodelled the Sam Mbakwe Airport, Owerri, into an
International Cargo Airport.
8.
Approved the reconstruction of the Eastern
highways.
9.
Gave historic and state burial to the Peoples’
General, Dim Chukwuemeka Odimegwu Ojukwu and Prof. Chinua Achebe.
10.
Established the Federal University in Abakaliki,
among others.
For a man who has done all these in just four
years, we are convinced that he will do more when given the opportunity to
complete his eight years constitutionally granted tenure.
Then, coming to the issue of the President
conceding party tickets to 40 senators, we obviously would want believe that he
was quoted out of context. For an internationally acclaimed crusader and
defender of the citizens’ right, to determine who governs or represent them and
whose philosophy of one man, one vote has
remained unparalleled; concession of automatic ticket can be coming
from him.
Mr. President’s belief and philosophy of the right
of the citizens to freely decide who represents them has been one of his
cardinal achievements and no one should attempt to rubbish his hard-earned
reputation.
Our advice therefore, is that people should stop
playing politics with such sensitive matter and that the revered name of Mr.
President should not be associated with such devilish aspiration. No
progressive representative should be afraid to go back to his/her people to
renew his/her mandate and that is the beauty of democracy. It is only non-progressive
representatives who alienated themselves while in office and who never bothered
visiting their electorate or keeping in touch with their roots that should be
asking for such cheap and undemocratic favour.
It is a terrible aberration! To allow such
representatives to go back without the support of their people smacks of
anything decent and civilized. We think that we have passed that era and like
Biblical Israelites – there is no going back to Egypt. Some senators never
bothered going home to their people and only came recently to deceive in
the name of empowerment, simply because of the coming 2015 elections. Such
deceit can no longer hold and should not be encouraged in any form or shape. It
will amount to encouraging indolence, inactiveness and removing the shine from
what participatory democracy should be.
This is an opportunity for Anambra North Senatorial
District of Anambra State to decide and choose who represents them at the
Senate and other elective offices and whose representation would likely impact
positively on them.
The Senate seat of Anambra North District is
neither hereditary and cannot be achieved through deceit nor sentiments. The
due process of allowing people to decide must be followed and any denial must
be resisted and consequences very grave.
It is not imperative that any elected legislator
must complete a 4-year tenure. It is on record that several elected legislators
never completed a 4-year tenure and were not conceded automatic ticket.
We are therefore pleading with the PDP to allow us
exercise our franchise to choose who represents us at the Senate. As our
would-be senator, we want to see somebody who understands the constituency and
its people; and somebody who has a road map on how to transform the lives of
our people.
We want to have somebody who has pedigree of
performance. We are not failures and must not be associated with that.
Long Live the PDP
Long Live Anambra Senatorial District
I was expecting to hear that the second Niger bridge has been constructed.
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