Grassroots Coalition, a pressure group for Goodluck Jonathan, GCGJ, Tuesday, lashed out at the Arewa Consultative Forum and the Northern Elders Forum over their stance on the President’s second term bid.
The group in a statement by its National President and Secretary, Comrade Gabriel Akpude and Comrade Levi Okoronkwo, said: “The Arewa consultative forum as an opposition to Mr. President has no moral right to tell Jonathan not to contest the 2015 general election.
“The same Arewa Consultative Forum and Northern Elders Forum, whose spokesperson has been mounting attacks on the office and the person of the President, Federal Republic of Nigeria, using both local and international media on why Dr Goodluck Jonathan should not run in 2015″.
“Both organisations are still deluding themselves that the North is divinely ordained to produce the President of Nigeria as quoted in the media.”
Noting that the northern groups had recruited some southerners in their bid to stop the 2015 presidential aspiration of President Goodluck Jonathan, the group reiterated that no amount of gang up would stop Jonathan from running in 2015.
“We shall unfold to Nigerians in graphical details who and how the Nigerian ship of state was sunk from October 1, 1960 till date".
“If the giant strides being made by the Jonathan administration is sending cold shivers down the spine of the Arewa Consultative Forum, the Northern Elders Forum and the recently registered APC; they should go-hang or simply get drowned in Lagos lagoon.
“President Goodluck Ebele Azikwe Jonathan derived his mandate from the peace loving people of Nigeria in a democratically, free, and fair election that was not annulled as was done by one of their leaders. So, his agreement is between the Nigerian people and not any sectional or regional body.
“Let the Arewa and their cohorts be warned that after the Jonathan’s Presidency come 2015 – 2019, the baton will be handed over to the “Igbos for another eight years before the baton goes to the middle belt, the so-called minorities of the North, known to be the willing tools doing the dirty bidding of their Arewa lordship,” the group said.
