Some Northern clerics have condemned comments made by the former president Goodluck Jonathan on the crisis in the
regions. The clerics said the statement made by Jonathan last week in a meeting with the United State congress on the religious crisis in the Northern part of the country is reckless and unpatriotic.
Speaking to journalists in Abuja on Monday, February 6, the national chairman of the Middle Belt Patriotic Front Musa Fomson urged security agencies to invite the former president for questioning.
Fomson said an invitation and interrogation of Jonathan will enable security agencies unravel his intentions about Nigeria.
“It was the mindlessness of his administration that amplified the schism to a point where persons that were once neutral learnt to hate adherents of other faiths. It was Goodluck Jonathan that made religion and ethnicity into campaign issues in order to cover the incompetence of his rule in the quest for re-election,” Fomson said.
The cleric added that the former president used his comment to sow seed of discord. Fomson said: “Ill advised romance with the then President of the Christian Association of Nigeria(CAN), Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, who even ran errand as weapons buyer, was instrumental to reducing Christendom into the current level where whatever CAN has to say is being second guessed.”
He said Jonathan failed to tell his US audience that killer-herdsmen would not be on rampage and occupy the position of the fourth deadliest group in the world if he and his aides had not stolen the money meant for buying weapons to defeat Boko Haram.
“Several of his aides, like Ankio-Briggs have stopped short of endorsing the war these militants are waging against the Nigerian state. His speech before the US House Committee stopped short of doing same by anchoring the attacks on oil export infrastructure on resource control,” Fomson said.
“If the former president thinks we have forgotten his foot soldiers and multiple persons from the Niger Delta threaten to make the country ungovernable should he lose the 2015 election, which he glaringly lost because of his serial failures and rejection by Nigerians,” he said.
He further blamed the former president for the hardship faced by many Nigerians in the country. “If Goolduck Jonathan truly loves Nigeria, he must immediately stop all his subversive activities like the speech he made before the US House Committee in which he usurped the role of a sitting government by negotiating a US intervention.
“He must speak with all his cronies to return all monies stolen from Nigeria, whether it was the one meant for arms purchase, stolen from crude oil sales or foreign loans that were channeled into their personal pockets.
“He must ask his militants in the Niger Delta and their proxies operating as separatists in the south-east to immediately cease hostilities against the Nigerian state.
“His coded call for them to scale up attacks is well noted when he said “Also, the military crackdown in the Niger Delta will not end the agitation there. It will have the opposite effect of provoking the youths which will cause them to seek to acquire sophisticated weapons to defend themselves and their communities.
“This may in turn lead to secessionist movements and the reincarnation of the Isaac Jasper Adaka Boro led revolution and the Biafran civil war.”
