Despite acting as his political backbone most of the times, Akwa Ibom people have dropped a damning verdict that former president, Dr Goodluck Ebele Jonathan never liked them.
The verdict came from the former national publicity secretary of the then ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and 3rd Republic parliamentarian, Senator Anietie Okon, while speaking exclusively with Daily Sun in Uyo.
Ironically, it was Senator Okon who moved a motion in 2010 in Akwa Ibom State Governor’s Lodge, during Jonathan’s visit urging him to contest the 2011 presidency, which he later won with the state contributing about one million votes to his electoral kitty.
Jonathan as president, paid no less than six visits to Akwa Ibom either to lay foundation of some projects or to inaugurate them or to attend any of the numerous programmes organised by PDP but hosted and probably funded by the state. These do not include his two campaign rally trips in 2011 and 2015.
But reacting to the claim by the presidency that President Muhammadu Buhari would only probe officers who served in Jonathan’s administration as against the general expectation that the probe would be comprehensive to affect any regime in which corruption was assumed to have prevailed, Sen. Okon said Akwa Ibom people would never be bothered about what happens to Jonathan as the then president never liked the people of the state.
Okon also said it would be utopian to believe that Buhari would spend his time to probe all administrations that existed before him, arguing that by such thinking, Nigerian may as well want the president to probe down to 1984 when he first ruled as a military head of state.
“If he says he is going to face Jonathan, let him do that. I don’t like pursuing trivial things that do not bring any benefit to my people. If he wants to investigate Jonathan and he has reasons to, there are things from Jonathan that will have links with other people, so I don’t bother about it. It is no issue.
“He is succeeding Jonathan and he feels there is much to clear and that things were not done properly, please let him go ahead and do the investigation. We didn’t elect him to come and do only probe. Don’t forget that in 1984 he was the head of state and today he is the president. How many regimes have passed after that? The immediate cause of our problem is what we see and what we know.
“And I’m not going to give any credit to Jonathan other than what he deserves. First of all, what did he do to Akwa Ibom? But we have kept quiet; let others be talking asking him to go back to the days of Adam because we don’t want to cash our cheques yet. We have a lot of things that we want to get for the people of this state for now.
“We elected Jonathan; we pushed his campaign; we stabilized him. As you speak with me; you are from this state what can you say Jonathan did for us. When our last governor was about to leave office, he came to the inescapable conclusion that Jonathan must have hated our people.