BEVERLY HILLS, October 10, (THEWILL) – Foremost poet, Odia Ofeimun has reasoned that the North moved against the re-election bid of then president Goodluck Jonathan in 2015 because of their interest in the next round of oil blocs sharing even as he insisted that delay in restructuring Nigeria is delaying the progress of the country.
Disclosing this at the 20th anniversary lecture of the City People magazine held recently, he stated that it was not only because of Jonathan’s defiance to the zoning arrangement on which zone should produce late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua that made the North move against the former in the 2015 presidential election.
According to Ofeimun, “Let’s put a finger on it: It was not just because there was an agreement inside the PDP that only a northerner could take over from Umaru Yar’adua. Even if there was, a private arrangement in a political party should never have been considered fit to overawe a national constitution.
“To concede office to the Vice President after the death of President Yar’adua, should have been automatic for true patriots. The more plausible rationale for not doing so was that all former Presidents of Nigeria, and shadowy cabals around them, wanted to have their leg in the door for the next round of bidding for oil blocks.
“They could not trust a leader of minority extraction, whose siblings were sitting with explosives on the ready, on top of the oil reserves, to do it in their own interest.
“President Goodluck Jonathan himself, not being a child of the bride’s chamber in his party, really could not have had any clue as to what the hullaballoo was all about. His trying to be his own man, as the whole country obviously expected, was at the heart of the crisis. No one knew this better than former President Obasanjo whose inability to put strings on either Yar’ Adua or Yar’ Adua’s successor, was his core reason for wanting to build a national constituency to oust a President regarded by many as his protégé.
“President Jonathan was so very snidely, and so quickly, slapped with being clueless in a way that was meant to de-legitimate him before he could do any damage to his putative minders after the Doctrine of Necessity that brought him to power. This was compounded by those who knew that this President of minority extraction, who was already putting his foot down to hold a National Conference even before he was sworn in, was not averse to restructuring the Federation.”
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