With Friends Like These

Daily Trust

18 January 2012

With Friends Like These

editorial

In the two weeks that this country was turned upside down by a crippling general strike as well as street demonstrations to protest the steep rise in fuel prices, some Niger Delta community, political and ex-militant leaders attempted to introduce a dangerous sectional dimension to the issue.

Their apparent aim was to offer a helping hand to President Goodluck Jonathan in the face of overwhelming national outrage over his administration's policy; but they overreached themselves when they introduced a potent poison to the national scene.

Niger Delta community leaders led by the Yakubu Gowon-era Federal Commissioner for Information, Chief Edwin Clark, met a few times under the aegis of the South-South Elders and Leaders.

They addressed a press conference in Abuja and also placed advertisements in several newspapers in the heat of the strike. In these, they alleged that the protest was orchestrated by Northern political leaders in order to wrest power away from their son.

This misdirected assertion has no basis in reason or logic