By Emma Amaize, Regional Editor, South-South
BEYOND the excitement of the inauguration of the Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, Sunday, May 29, as President, South-South leaders, yesterday, expressed their secret fears and expectations concerning his Presidency, and consequently, they have set a target his government in the next four years.

Former secretary general of the Ohaneze Ndigbo, Chief Joseph Achuzia, former Minister of Information, Prof Sam Oyovbaire, Senator Aniete Okon, erudite scholar, Prof B.I.C. Ijomah, former director general of Ibrahim Babaginda Campaign Organization, High Chief Raymond Alegho Dokpesi, Coordinator of the Ijaw Monitoring Group, IMG, Comrade Joseph Evah and Chairman of the Congress for Progressive Change, CPC, in Edo state, Comrade Godwin Erhahon said they would want a South-South President to succeed where others failed.

Oyovbaire

They charged the President-elect not to let down the region as expectations were very high, but offer a different brand of leadership to prove that the region holds the key to the growth of the country.

In fact, Comrade Evah said it would be a colossal shame and disaster for the South-South if President Jonathan did not transform the country in the next four years, given the high expectations of South-Southerners and the cross-section of Nigerians, who defied ethnic and religious considerations to vote for him on April 16.

Speaking to Saturday Vanguard, former Secretary-General of Ohaneze Ndigbo, Chief Joseph Achuzia said, “First, it must be understood that the votes President Jonathan Goodluck Jonathan garnered were not votes from his party but votes that that came based on his personality and our perception of his person. All these years,  the nation has not changed, it still remains the same country that our forefathers left behind, it is not a true federation, it’s just a confederation based on tripod standing, notwithstanding the fact that we have all of sudden created a six -regional structure .

“Secondly, given the violence that greeted his election in some parts of the North, I think the President should stand firm and exhibit no difference between somebody from the South-South and South-East, but clearly, he should show a different kind of leadership from what we have seen so far in this country.

“The paucity and poverty of structures in the country were as a result of poor leadership. It was blamed on military rule before now and I know that military men are human beings like us, they failed quite alright and subsequent leadership did not fare better. The onus is now on Jonathan to change the course of events for the good of the country”, he added.

Chief Achuzia asserted that even though former President Olusegun Obasanjo ruled from 1999- 2007 as a civilian, his was actually a quasi civilian rule that vaunted a civilian look, but was not really a civilian government.

According to him, “President Jonathan should be more accommodating. He should be disciplined because the people of the South-South are disciplined people. It is because we are disciplined, that was why other Nigerians deemed it fit to make one of us the President of the country”.

Achuzia, a “Colonel” in the defunct Biafra stated, “The next thing President Jonathan should focus on is security for all Nigerians. He must not under any circumstance condone those who cause violence in the society. He must not be looking while lives of Nigerians are being wasted by a group of Nigerians, as nobody is above the law. He (Jonathan) is the law, we have invested the law of the land on him and he should use the powers we have invested on him to execute the law.

“Another thing is that he should remember all the promises he made to Nigerians during his electioneering campaign, I know he made promises on energy, it is an endemic problem, and he should fulfill his promises

“Privatization should go on notwithstanding the attitude of those who benefitted from some of  the scandals that have come to our knowledge. Once he can deliver or show signs that he can deliver, Nigerians will follow him all the way”, he stated.
Regarding the Niger-Delta region, the Asaba chief said, “Jonathan is a Nigerian leader and not a Niger-Delta leader.

Other leaders of the country did not call themselves- Niger-Delta leaders, so we should not see him as such, what the country requires is total economic transformation and a President is for all, not for one section of the country”.

Another prominent South-South leader and chairman of DAAR Communications, owners of the Africa Independent Television, High Chief Raymond Dokpesi told Saturday Vanguard, “He (President) should execute the promises he made and hold tenaciously to his programmes.

“He should pursue the interest of the ordinary man and fairness to all citizens of the country. The major problems in the country are power,  health, education and unemployment. All these things are what he promised to address and he should  tackle them.

“If he makes strong effort, even appreciable effort, he would have laid a foundation for the growth of the country. We wish him well, we are looking forward to a leader from the South-South  that will make a difference in the country”, he said.

Senator Aniete Okon who spoke from Uyo, Akwa Ibom state told Saturday Vanguard, “The country has shown the South-South equity and my take on it is that President Jonathan should be driven by equity in all he does in the next four years”.

Former Information Minister, Prof Oyovbaire asserted, “Expectations are high across the country. The South- South has a unique problem of infrastructure but he is not President of South-South alone, he must not allow the South-East and South-West to suffer just as he tackles the problems in the North too.

“I want to say, however, that there should be a flow of goods and services and servicing of the entire economy of Nigeria so that the people will be positively affected”, he added.

Prof Oyovbaire said that it would be a disaster if after President Jonathan’s two or three years in office, there were not concrete things on the ground for South-South people to boast about what their son, who is President, had done to transform the nation.

He said he had not seen an expanded document on what President Jonathan wants to do and a glimpse of his action plan was based on general statements made during his campaign, which was not a clear-cut blueprint.

The ex-minister, nevertheless, said President Jonathan should focus on the provision of infrastructure in the country, particularly the traditional ones such as water, road, drainage, control of erosion and  electricity. He opined that special attention should be paid to the Niger-Delta by his leadership.

Prof Ijomah who is a member of the defunct Niger-Delta Technical Committee, NTDC, headed by Mr. Ledum Mitee, was livid that more than two years after the report of the committee was submitted to the former President, late Umaru Yar’Adua, the Federal Government has not deemed it fit to release a white paper on it.

Specifically, he urged President Jonathan to ensure the Federal Government issued a whitepaper on the report. His words, “President Jonathan has emerged as President, he will be inaugurated shortly. We had  the Technical Committee on Niger-Delta, we worked for one month, we were meeting and Arewa Consultative Forum, ACF, was meeting in Kaduna on Niger-Delta, what is their business on Niger-Delta. We submitted our report, they submitted their own.

Our report has not seen the light of the day; we have written to Jonathan several times, bring a white paper on Niger-Delta Technical Committee report, that report is gathering dust now for over two years.

“And this was a report for which 43 or more South-southerners, worked for under very stringent conditions. We were almost made to fold up the meeting. We were in Nicon Noga hotel but if you drank water there, you paid. It was bad. We ate only one meal. They gave you N10,000 for food, we ate the first meal together in the afternoon which cost us N5,500 out of the N10,000 given us for food, then you have only N4,500 left to eat breakfast and dinner.

You are given one bottle of water free, you drank more than one, you paid and you were not allowed to bring in water from outside.  At a point in the meeting, I stood and said, gentlemen, even if they don’t feed us, we would finish this report because we all involved.

“That was the first time you set up a committee on Niger-Delta with only Niger-Delta indigenes. We told them the whole truth in the report and nobody is listening to that.

Well, the country is in Jonathan’s hands , if he wants , he can rule the country well”, he added.
IMG national coordinator, Comrade Evah told Saturday Vanguard, “The message is very clear, he is the President of the whole country, not of one geo-political zone and to that extent, he should operate as such. But that is not to say that he should forget home – South-South. Anybody who tells him to forget where he comes from is his enemy because when his tenure ends, they will either look at us and congratulate us or laugh at us for his failure.

“In fact, it will be a shame if Jonathan fails the South-South because he wants to satisfy all Nigerians. He should pay closer attention to where he comes from while his whole constituency, as we all know, is and remains Nigeria. If he fails to develop South-South in the next four years because he wants to develop Nigeria, people will call us mad people, because the next President will not develop South-South.

Chairman of the Congress for Progressive Change, CPC, in Edo State, Comrade Erhahon said what he saw as a major challenge for President Jonathan “is the level of oppression being meted to us in the oil and gas communities in the South-South and Edo state in particular by the oil companies”.