A South-East Group, the Igbo Progressive Front (IPF), has condemned the Director General of Voice of Nigeria (VON), Osita Okechukwu’s attack on the governor of Bauchi State, Bala Mohammed.
Okechukwu had faulted Governor Mohammed’s argument against the party’s zoning of the 2023 Presidency to the South, adding that the governor got it wrong on all fronts.
Okechukwu’s reaction comes hours after the Bauchi state governor who, after a visit to former President Olusegun Obasanjo in Abeokuta, told correspondents that the APC’s move to zone the presidency to the South is no threat to the PDP because his party’s strategy is to “whip up ethnoreligious sentiment.”
Okechukwu had noted that Governor Bala’s disposition showed the lack of dynamism in the political thinking of the opposition PDP, stressing that the opposition party had shown that it was incapable of upstaging APC, especially when the unity and prosperity of Nigeria were not uppermost in their calculations.
In its reaction to Okechukwu’s statement, the group expressed disbelief that a pan-national figure, who authored the ‘Doctrine of Necessity that made the former President, Goodluck Jonathan an acting President of Nigeria, be described as an ethnic irredentist or chauvinist.
The group, in a statement by its President, Mazi Njoku Mbamalu, said that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has shown cohesion and direction, while the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) is playing a catch-up and fighting internal fires to appear electable.
The group said that Governor Bala Mohammed, who is an acknowledged de-tribalised Nigerian, remains an inclusionist and a champion of diversity.
” Therefore, with great astonishment and disbelief, we wonder why a pan-national figure who authored the ‘Doctrine of Necessity that made the former President, Dr Goodluck Ebele Jonathan an Acting President of Nigeria, would be described as an ethnic irredentist or chauvinist,” IPF said.
The group described Senator Bala Mohammed as a “Fulani who stood up to support Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, an Ijaw man, at a time there was a crisis in the nation. Bala did his duty and spent his political life so far working in the interest of the nation. Bala’s actions are not the acts of a chauvinistic tribalist.”
The group, has, however, wondered how a man Okechukwu once described as good be portrayed in a bad light.
