PRESIDENT Goodluck Jonathan’s office on Tuesday took issue with the recent visit by eight opposition governors to the embattled northeastern state of Borno, saying the visit was a desperate political stunt by the opportunist politicians seeking to preempt the forthcoming high profile visit of President Goodluck Jonathan to the region.
The case through Mr. Doyin Okupe, the senior special assistant to the president on public affairs, who addressed newsmen in Abuja on Tuesday.
“Where were these governors in the last eighteen months that they were in office?” Mr. Okupe asked his audience in apparent reference to the point that the men were motivated by a desire to take the shine off President Jonathan’s impending visit Borno.
According to Okupe, the opposition politicians were a group of people with no unifying views or beliefs, who are more on a selfish political mission than a patriotic one.
Some members of the newly formed All Peoples Congress, mainly governors, had indeed traveled to Maiduguri, capital of Borno State on February 28, claiming solidarity with the government and the people of the state who have been in the eye of the storm of incessant attacks from members of the violent Islamic group Boko Haram since 2009.
The delegation included governors Kashim Shettima of Borno, Babatunde Fashola of Lagos, Rauf Aregbesola of Osun, Tanko al-Makura of Nasarawa, Rochas Okorocha of Imo, Ibikunle Amosun of Ogun, Adams Oshiomhole of Edo, Kayode Feyemi of Ekiti, and Abubakar Aliyu, the Deputy Governor of Yobe State.
The visiting governors also used the occasion to announce the donation of 200 million naira to two states of Yobe and Borno, the two states hit most by the menace of Boko Haram violence.
Reacting to the visit, Mr. Lai Mohammed, the national publicity secretary of the Action Congress of Nigeria said the visit was a worthy example to show the central government in Abuja that no part of the country is out-of-bounds to anyone, including the president.
“Part of the reason this needless Boko Haram crisis has festered is that the president in particular has failed to show leadership,” Mr Mohammed said, adding that “by staying away from the affected parts of the country since the crisis started in 2009 for fear of his personal safety, and also receding behind the safe walls of the Aso Rock fortress to celebrate independence anniversaries, the president has unwittingly emboldened the anarchists who have killed and maimed thousands,” Mr. Mohammed said.
The spokesman went on to cite the example of foreign leaders who have travelled to war zones as a sign of defiance and courage in the face of danger.
“When Presidents in other lands defy terrorists, it is not that they don’t care about their own safety, but that they simply want their compatriots to know that whatever fate befalls them is shared by their leaders.
“That was why President George W. Bush of the US flew to Iraq in the heat of the insurgency there, and President Barack Obama also of the US travelled to Afghanistan even amid threats. By the way, both places are thousands of kilometres from the United States,” he said.
The president’s office obviously disagrees with the governors and the intent of their mission in Borno, saying it is anything but a genuinely sympathetic cause.
“This is surely an act of crass opportunism and political desperation on the part of these governors and the party they represent,” Mr. Okupe said in his remarks as President Jonathan’s public image maker.
“These are desperate power mongers who flock together in spite of their obvious conflicting political philosophies and inordinate ambitions.”
“What is important is not just for the president to visit Borno and come back. What he has been doing is to spend sleepless nights with security chiefs mapping out strategies to combat the insurgency,” he said.