By Akinwale Kasali
Even though former President Goodluck Jonathan’s Spokesman, Ikechukwu Eze, has made it clear that his Principal has neither discussed 2023 with anybody, nor does he plan to join the All Progressive Congress, APC, to run for the office, pressure has kept mounting on the former President to do run.
The latest group is a coalition of pressure groups under the aegis of the National Coalition for Goodluck Jonathan, NACOJO which says it has concluded plans to embark on aggressive grassroots mobilisation for Jonathan across the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja.
NACOJO’s National Convener, Munene Wilson, in a media briefing in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State Capital, after an enlarged Executive Council meeting of the body said the body would release a comprehensive timetable next week for the inauguration of its State Chapters.
Wilson said the body realised that Nigeria needs a leader that is abreast with the current political and economic challenges of the country, saying Jonathan is such a leader.
He added: “The Nigerian Nation must not be handed over at this critical moment to a Leader that will run experiment with her political and economic challenges.
“We plead with the former President to consider Nigeria above his personal interest and yield to the popular call for him to run for the 2023 presidential election on the platform of a preferred political party.”
Wilson was accompanied by the group’s National Secretary, Dr. Iteimowei Major, the Director of Organisation/Legal, Ovieyi Theophilus and the Director of Media and Publicity, Ayebaitari Easterday.
The call by NACOJO was earlier followed by a group, under the auspices Youths Earnestly Demand for Goodluck Jonathan 2023 (YED 4 GEJ 2023), which had called on the former president to contest the 2023 presidential election, adding that it (the group) has resolved to fund his political campaign.
The Group had earlier issued a statement through its National Chairman, Teddy Omiloli, and National Director of Operations, Douye Daniel, stressing that the country is urgently in need of a nation builder, a unifier that can save the country from its current state.
The group said: “We are demanding Dr. Goodluck Jonathan to return to power as president in 2023, and we have also resolved to fund his electioneering should he accept the call to return to power in 2023.”
It noted that Jonathan met a Nigeria with a faulty constitution; saw the need to restructure Nigeria and conveyed a national confab in 2014, but was unable to implement its recommendations because he was voted out of office in 2015.
The group said most Nigerians, including the youths, were too blind then to see that Nigeria’s problem was the inability of Nigerians as a people to renegotiate the country’s unity.
It added: “We call on every Nigerian to lend a voice to the demand for the return of Jonathan in 2023, as he has no other choice but to accept the call to render service to humanity in the capacity of the president of Nigeria.
“We as the youths of this great country, after discovering the Nigeria’s problem and found the solution in Goodluck Jonathan, we are calling on all Nigerians, including our political elites, present administration and religious leaders, to join the call for the return of Goodluck Jonathan, and also join our #BringbackGEJ project.”
