A WAVE of rallies yesterday swept through some cities in the Niger Delta area, with the organisers calling for a South-South President next year.
The protests took place in Calabar, Port Harcourt and Asaba, the capitals of Cross River, Rivers and Delta states.
The rallies in Calabar and Port Harcourt were organised by the South-South Peoples Assembly (SSPA).
“On the Calabar declaration we stand” was the rallying cry of the protesters in the Cross River State capital, who formerly submitted their letter of request to the State Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Mr. Soni Abang. They re-emphasised the “unanimity of purpose and commitment of the people of the South-South to take the Presidency of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in 2007.”
“This position,” according to the SSPA Chairman in the state, Dr. Ambrose Akpanika, is in line with the famous “Calabar Declaration” of the South-South people in a mass rally held in the ancient city on November 9, 2004.
The SSPA, which opposed the third term agenda marched through some major streets of Calabar before submitting their letter to the PDP State Chairman who was represented by his deputy, Peter Ojeh.
Akpanika noted that the SSPA “has rallied a cross section of our people comprising the elders, the youth, political leaders, men and women organisations, relevant unions and the civil society to march here to request your chapter of the PDP to instrumentalise the zoning of the presidency by your great party to the South-South zone.”
He went on: “The great move is considered most strategic in the actualisation of the painful dream of our oppressed people.
“This is expected to be the greatest contribution of all time by you, the stakeholders of the party to the solution of the most challenging problem of Nigeria – the Niger Delta question.”
Abang assured the SSPA that the party would look into the letter and take a decision after due consideration.
Meanwhile, friends and supporters of Governor Donald Duke of the state have started subtle campaigns to boost his chances in grabbing the party’s presidential ticket.
His friends are posting campaign messages through GSM in favour of Duke and the Governor of Kaduna State, Alhaji Ahmed Makarfi, for Vice President.
One of the text messages reads: “Donald Duke for President, Makarfi for Vice President.”
But heavily armed anti-riot police used teargas to disperse scores of SSPA youths who took to the streets of Port Harcourt, to agitate that the South-South zone should produce Nigeria’s next president.
Also, the Ijaw National Congress (INC) president, Prof. Kimse Okoko, has urged Nigerians, particularly in the South-South, to roundly reject any governor now jostling for the office of the president having supported tenure elongation.
The demonstrators drawn from some higher institutions and various youth organizations in Rivers State were alleged to have failed to obtain a police permit to hold street processions.
Trouble started when the youths who had converged at the gate of St. Paul’s Anglican Church (Garrison) on Aba Road, ran into the policemen just less than 100 metres from the Abali park. The policemen who must have been acting on instruction, on sighting the placard-carrying youths, fired teargas canisters at them.
Earlier, the leader of the SSPA youths, Oko Jaja Bethel, noted that since 1960 when Nigeria got political independence from Britain, the other five geo-political zones of the country had at one time or the other produced the head of state. According to him, the quest for equity and justice has necessitated the demand of the South-South to produce the next president.
“We have sustained the economy of this country for over four decades now. We can as well sustain this country politically”.
He warned that the youths would not condone anyone from the zone who would betray the aspiration of the South-South people.
Okoko told The Guardian that South-South governors who supported tenure elongation betrayed the zone’s quest for president and resource control.
He added: “They were a great disappointment. But the president of this country must not have to be a governor. We have capable competent people all over this country who are not governors that can become the president.”
As women in Delta State took to the streets in their hundreds yesterday demanding that a South-South candidate be allowed to clinch the presidency in 2007, posters of the erstwhile National Security Adviser, Gen. Aliyu Gusau (rtd), have flooded the streets of the Zamfara State capital, Gusau. There were also campaign posters bearing Gusau’s pictures in Army uniform canvassing support for him in the 2007 presidential election.
The Delta women, drawn from the 25 local government areas of the state, carried placards some of which read: “It is the turn of South-South to produce the president in 2007,” “Enough of this injustice, the presidency is not meant for a certain group of people,” “No South-South, no more production of oil,” and “South-South Presidency Now.”
The women congregating under the aegis of Delta State Women Assembly (DSWA) and led by Mrs. Ngozi Nwabuonwu, urged registered political parties in the country to ensure that they picked their presidential candidates from the South-South.
According to Nwabuonwu, the South-South produces the nation’s wealth and has remained the least benefiting region in the country.
Besides, the women who held a rally at the Asaba Township Stadium before taking to the streets to press home their demands, said that since the country’s independence in 1960, the South-South has not been given the opportunity to rule the country.
The Delta State Women Assembly, she said, believed in power shift and rotation as it would enhance cohesion and unity of the various ethnic groups in the country.
Nwabuonwu said that the South-South has for too long been denied the right to control her resources, arguing that “it is only fair, equitable and just that our oil and gas wealth should be used to develop our land and people”.
“We, the Delta State Women Assembly hereby appeal to all the political parties and their executive members to ensure that it is the turn of the South-South geo-political zone to produce the next president of Nigeria,” she added.
Similarly, one of the women delegates for the rally, Mrs. Janet Oniovosa, told The Guardian that the women had to take the centre stage in the South-South quest for the presidency because women make up the greater number of voters.
Also, she said the women had been at the receiving end of the marginalisation, degradation, neglect and poverty of the South-South.
Meanwhile, 15 members of the National Assembly from the South East geo-political zone have asked Nigerians to reject totally in the next dispensation the PDP and all pro-third term governors and legislators now seeking re-election into various offices.
They disagreed with the position of the leadership of the party, which has narrowed its search for President Olusegun Obasanjo’s successor to the South-South, insisting that Ndigbo should be allowed to produce the next president of the country.
At a press conference in Enugu, the lawmakers said they were not afraid of losing their membership in the PDP if only they could get Nigerians jettison the party.
They called on stakeholders of South East zone to unite and make persuasive case to the rest of Nigeria that the next president of the country should be elected from the zone, adding that those jostling for elective positions after supporting third term had no moral right to do so.
The legislators operating under the banner of 2007 Movement, an association of anti-third term legislators at the National Assembly, further explained their role in the “shooting down” of the controversial constitution amendment bill, insisting that the third term agenda, which they noted was the main reason for the aborted constitutional review, would have created “mind-boggling disadvantages to Ndigbo’s political and economic development.”
The delegation of legislators led by Senator Uche Chukwumerije, Chairman of the 2007 Movement, strongly criticised the leadership of the ruling PDP for its role in the third term plot, saying its role was “to say the least unfortunate.”
Present at the conference were Senator Ben Obi, Hon. Cyril Maduabum and Hon D. Christian, all from Anambra State. Those who signed the document but were not present were Senators Adolphus Wabara, Joy Emodi, Chris Adighije, as well as six members of House of Representatives from the zone. But names of members of the National Assembly from Enugu and Ebonyi States were not in the document.
Chukwumerije, who read the nine-page statement signed by the 15 South-East lawmakers, said: “The PDP Chairman made every effort to force its members to support the third term project. We rejected this directive because our loyalty remains with our respective constituencies that elected us into office and because we believe that the overwhelming unpopularity of the proposal will hurt the party.
“What moral right does anybody who supported tenure elongation have to contest the presidency or governorship positions? What moral rights have legislators who supported third term, who sought through automatic return ticket to disenfranchise the voters and sideline people’s sovereign choice of candidates – what rights have such candidates to
contest elections in 2007? Does it not make sense that those who supported tenure elongation should wait till 2011, when the three terms of four years for President Obasanjo and the Governors would have expired?”
The lawmakers who insisted that it was the turn of the South-East to produce the next president, told Ndigbo to be vigilant, watchful and careful in selecting the type of persons that would represent them in the various elective offices.
Responding to allegations by the Prof. Joe Irukwu-led Ohanaeze Ndigbo that Chukwumerije and his colleagues in the anti-third term campaign scuttled the chances of Ndigbo in the proposed amendment which could have restructured the country as well as the creation of an additional state for the zone as canvassed by Ndigbo, the Abia senator said even if the bill was allowed to sail, Ndigbo would have benefited nothing because these issues were not provided for in the bill.
The lawmakers, however, assured that they would spearhead the creation of an additional state in the zone by introducing a separate bill to that effect in due course, adding that the draft was already being worked upon.
He denied allegations that his refusal to support the constitutional amendment bill was because he was working for former military leader, General Ibrahim Babangida, saying that he had never betrayed Igbo interest.
He added that since Igbo interest at the moment was the 2007 presidency, he could not support Babangida’s bid as it would amount to a betrayal of Ndigbo.
Jun62006