What looked political manoeuvring aimed at wining the minds of the people of Abeokuta, home of ex- President Olusegun Obasanjo and Ogun state at large, Edwin Clark, foremost Ijaw leader and main believer of President Jonathan’s re-election bid, has taken a political campaign to the palace of the Alake of Egbaland and Paramount Ruler of Abeokuta, Oba Adedotun Gbadebo. Clark, who was in the palace of the Paramount Ruler obviously to canvass the support of the monarch and his influence over the people of his kingdom, wooed people of Abeokuta and the entire Yoruba to re-elect President Jonathan of People’s Democratic Party (PDP) instead of Buhari/ Osibajo Presidency in All Progressive Congress (APC), saying that true federalism was only needed to tackle corruption in the country.
The Ijaw leader pledged that President Jonathan would implement reports arrived at, at the last year National Constitutional Conference if re-elected from May 29th to anomalies of too much power concentrated at the centre, which he said, gave undue room for corruption, adding that the earlier opposition of National Conference by APC showed that they did not want true federalism and would implement the reports if voted into power. He said: “The Yoruba have always asked for true Federalism. So, when we went to the conference in February last year, the conference of nationalities, a conference of Nigeria that 100 years apart, let us meet to discuss the basis of our living together in this country. And we took decisions for a new Nigeria to be born, over 600, who is to implement it? “Those who call themselves APC today cannot implement it because they were against it. None of them had the courage to say let us have the National Conference. Jonathan did and he has the duty to implement it.
So, I’m saying as you know this is not the time to preach support Jonathan. He’s already part of this community. I want to say as from May 29, every aspect of the Confab will produce a constitution whereby you will have a constitution for Ogun State, you will have a constitution for Delta State and that’s what we had in Chief Awolowo’s time. “But today whether we are practising Federalism or we are practising unitary form of government, nobody knows. Every power is concentrated in the centre and that’s why we have corruption today. But if the powers are shared and there is very little at the centre, would there be corruption? No!” “What we want in this country is unity of the country. Anybody who wants to divide this country, is not a Nigerian. We must do things that will keep us together. We must practise federalism whereby every component of this country will develop at its own pace. There is no reason why we should develop at the same time with Osun State. If you have the resources, go ahead.
“In 1956 when we could not get independence for Nigeria, Awolowo got independence for Western Nigeria. Others could not do it; that is what we call Federalism. California and New York are not the same. New York and Texas are not the same. But in Nigeria they want to level everybody up. That’s not true Federalism,” Clark said. The elder statesman, who was in Abeokuta at the weekend as part of the activities scheduled to receive him by the Ogun State chapter of PDP, accused the leaders of the various ethnic nationalities in the country of being selfish in their handling of the affairs of their people and warned APC not to parade themselves as followers of late Obafemi Awolowo since their character and ideology were obviously different.
