An angry and shocked President Goodluck Jonathan has dismissed the viral news of his comment on a proposed Biafran Nation and the Niger Delta as fake.
On Monday, January 13, 2025, the news, online, was to the effect that Dr. Jonathan, at a lecture he delivered at an unnamed venue and event in Texas, United States, had said that the Niger Delta would never be part of any proposed Biafra Nation; that the Niger Delta where he, Jonathan, comes from, would rather be part of Nigeria than part of any Biafran Nation because doing otherwise would be like jumping from frying pan to fire.
But the former President, in a statement signed on his behalf, by his spokesperson, Ikechukwu Eze, said he never spoke anywhere on, or about the Niger Delta and the proposed Biafran Nation. He noted that the same story had made the rounds in 2017, and received an appropriate refutation from the former President. The statement wondered how and why it came up again.
The statement reads in part:
“Our attention has been drawn to a fake story with the title, ‘Why Niger Deltans don’t want to be part of Biafra’ currently circulating online and purported to have been taken from a speech allegedly presented by former President Dr Goodluck Jonathan at an unnamed event in Texas, the United States.
“The story which is being recycled in some online platforms claimed that the former President allegedly spoke on the relationship between the people of the Niger Delta and South-East states while addressing the broader issue of agitation for Biafra.
“We thought we had finally dealt with the issue of this falsehood with our timely and well-publicised disclaimer, soon after the supposed speech first surfaced online in 2017
“However, it beggars belief that the same jejune and disastrous effort at speech writing, hatched by some yet-to-be-identified shady character, is again being served to the social media public as a fresh dish.
“We want to state, as we did in 2017, that there was no such event involving the former President and that Dr Goodluck Jonathan will never present such a sloppy and hate-filled speech.”
President Jonathan is from Bayelsa, South-south Nigeria.
Discover more from The Source
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
