Jonathan can’t be trusted –Atiku

Former vice president and presidential aspirant of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, has stated that President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan was present at the December 2, 2002 enlarged caucus meeting of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) where the agreement to share power between North and South was taken.

He said under that agreement, those in attendance, including Jonathan, then a former deputy governor of Bayelsa State, resolved after voting to rotate the presidency on the basis of eight years each between the North and South.

He expressed surprise and shock that President Jonathan was now claiming ignorance of such agreement for the sake of his ambition to contest in 2011. According to a statement by Atiku’s Campaign Organisation, the president should have been honourable and courageous enough to own up to his participation in the formulation of a major party power sharing formula.
“The ambition to rule at all costs should not make us abandon the path of honour by denying a decision that has enthroned stability and unity in our body politic,” he said.

The PDP presidential aspirant said it was surprising that despite existing and verifiable minutes of the landmark agreement, the president was pretending that no such pact was ever reached. Atiku said the highpoint of the minutes of the meeting as read and adopted by the enlarged caucus was that “the national caucus generally decided that the 1998 zoning of the positions of the president, vice president, senate president, speaker, party chairman, party secretary, etc, should remain as it would stabilise the party...”

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