LEADER of the Niger Delta
Peoples Volunteer Force, Alhaji Mujaheed Dokubo-Asari, on Monday
canvassed the dissolution of the President Goodluck Jonathan’s
government to pave the way for the convocation of a Sovereign National
Conference.
He said the conference was the only
solution to the menace of the violent Islamist sect, Boko Haram, whose
members are currently executing a bombing campaign against military and
police facilities and churches especially in the northern states and
Abuja.
“Whether he likes it or not, Goodluck
Jonathan must convoke an SNC. There is a need for a national discourse
and dialogue. It is only an SNC that will solve the problem. The
solution to the Boko Haram crisis is to dissolve the government and
convoke an SNC,” Dokubo-Asari told journalists at the meeting with
youths of the Niger Delta in Abuja.
The ex-Niger Delta militant warned that
if the Boko Haram issue could lead to another civil war if not tackled
on time. He said the sect’s “arrogance” was unIslamic.
“The arrogance of Boko Haram is
un-Islamic. The level of bombs they are using is low. If we begin
throwing bombs, nobody will stay in Abuja,” the man who claimed to have
started arms struggle in the oil rich Niger Delta said.
While threatening that the Niger Delta
youths would retaliate if any evil should befall Jonathan, Dokubo-Asari
however said the President had failed in the governance of the country.
“We are saying that nothing must happen to Goodluck Jonathan because if anything happens to him, the world will know.
“But we are not saying Goodluck Jonathan
has tried. He has failed. What is Godswill Orubebe (Minister of Niger
Delta) still doing in the federal cabinet? If Orubebe has failed,
Jonathan has failed.
“A time will come if he didn’t change,
our people would say, Goodluck, you are on your own. He has every power
and every moral authority to convoke a Sovereign National Conference. He
must correct the 55 years of injustice against us.”
On the face-off between ex-dictator
Ibrahim Babangida and leader of the Ijaw nation/First Republic Minister
of Information, Edwin Clark, over the Boko Haram menace, the NDPVF
leader said IBB and former Head of State, General Muhammadu Buhari
(retd.), had no hands in the violence unleashed on the country by the
sect.
Clark last week had accused Babangida of
alleged complicity in the Boko Haram activities thus attracting a
response from the ex-dictator camp that the first republic minister “is a
loose cannon in public discourse.”
Dokubo-Asari said, “I want to be fair to
IBB and Buhari on the Boko Haram crisis. They have nothing to do and
cannot do anything about it. But the fact remains that the political
elite of which IBB and Buhari belongs have not been able to address the
problem of Boko Haram.
“They cannot do anything because nobody
wants to commit suicide. The Boko Haram people are just killing
themselves but cannot kill us.”
He also faulted the amnesty programme of the Federal Government which he said amounted to bribery and blackmail.
“The Amnesty is a bribe. I did not
partake in the amnesty programme. That amnesty will not work because it
amounts to criminalising people on account of kidnapping and they will
later be settled. Amnesty was just a bribe for the oil to flow,” he
said.
Source: The Punch Newspaper
No comments:
Post a Comment