Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, HURIWA, has warned former President Goodluck Jonathan to shelve the plans of entering the race for the 2023 presidency.
There are growing rumours that the former President has yet to declare his interest because he was yet to receive the assurance from the All Progressives Congress, APC, that he would run as the party’s consensus candidate.
Other rumours say that Goodluck Jonathan is seeking the blessing or approval of President Muhammadu Buhari to join the APC and grab the party’s sole ticket uncontested.
Addressing his supporters in Abuja a few weeks ago, Jonathan did not deny nursing the intention to run for the 2023 presidency as he told them to watch out.
Jonathan stated categorically that the political process regarding his decision to contest for president in 2023 was ongoing.
Many Nigerians believe that Jonathan was being used as a tool by Northern APC chieftains, to reduce the number of years the South will stay in power, having served four years as an elected Southern president already.
Jonathan became the first victim of the merger of some political parties and political bigwigs under the umbrella of the APC in 2014, as he, in 2015, became the first democratically elected President of Nigeria to be defeated in an election and removed from office by a new administration.
With the current administration having allegedly failed in all areas of governance and left the country almost in a state of beyond repair, it is understood that some Northern APC chieftains see Jonathan as the best candidate to sell to Nigerians, who they would welcome with a warm embrace.
But HURIWA is warning the Old Rivers-State-born politician to avoid such a move, adding that contesting the election would be seen as reversing what happened to the Igbo in River State after the Nigerian-Biafra war.
“Our parents who had houses in the State lost all houses during the war. But my father had so many houses in the North, but they were all taken care of by a Northerner,” HURIWA’s Emmanuel Onwubiko said in a press conference in Abuja on Wednesday.
“After the 30-month-old war, my father came back and collected the old rent and he got all his houses back. But River State took all the housing assets belonging to Igbo people in Rivers.
“So, Goodluck Jonathan should not replay that hatred that they showed to the Igbo after the war because if he accepts to be candidate of APC and become the president, it means he has short-changed the Igbo who gave him their all.
“If he does that, the South-South and the South-East will never have peace or trust each other for life. Because what happened to us after the war in the 60s, when we lost so many housing assets, they have not been forgotten.
“So, if he tried a second betrayer by accepting APC’s enticement to become President for only four years, he is doing it because he wants to short-change the Igbos,” he said.
