A chieftain of the All Progressive Congress (APC), Chief Eze Chukwuemeka Eze has appealed to the PANDEF (pan Niger Delta Elders Forum) leader, Chief Edwin Clark, to jettison his opposition to the naming of the Agbor Railway Station Complex after Dr. Goodluck Jonathan and tackle orchestrated plans to sabotage the construction of Eastern railway line.
Eze stressed that the ex-President is satisfied and has already expressed gratitude to President Muhammadu Buhari and the Transportation Minister, Rt. Hon. Chibuike Amaechi, for the honour done him.
In a statement, Eze said, if icons like Obafemi Awolowo, Dr Alex Ekweme and other great leaders could have some of the railway stations named after them, then ex-President, Dr. Jonathan, a pride of the Eastern region, is eminently qualified and entitled for the honour and it will be unfair to attempt to discredit it for any reason whatsoever.
He further pointed out that in currency (money) naming, it is faces on small bills that are regarded as more important because most people would touch and see them daily than the higher denominations.
The APC chieftain noted that the number of people that would see Jonathan’s name per day at a railways station would be far more than those that would see it at an international airport or international hotel.
The party chieftain therefore called on Chief Clark to pay a attention to the artful scheme to satanically deprive the Eastern region the divine opportunity of linking her to other parts of the country through modern rail.
He said events have clearly revealed the existence of a cabal, a group of unconscious and conscienceless mortals, with a sworn mandate to scuttle every effort of the Federal Government at developing the South-South and South East regions and with a term of reference to frustrate the Eastern rail line project which he said will meaningfully impact the lives and livelihoods of the people.
He wants Clark to think about why eastern ports remained dead over the decades and decide if such was a mere accident or a design by a group to ensure that the economy of the eastern region remained dead and continue to feed from another region. The statement reminded people of former eastern region to know that politics is another form of war with same results.
Eze lamented that more sickening is the very disturbing fact that Hon. Ossai Nicholas Ossai, the lawmaker representing the good people of Ndokwa/Ukwani Federal Constituency of Delta State and Chairman, House Committee on Treaties, Protocols and Agreements, has been conscripted to do the bidding against his own people by obstructing the securing of the China loan to be used in building the Eastern Railways.
He called on stakeholders of South South and South East to rise up, lend their voices against the common adversaries and react with the timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people.
Recall that the Minister of Transportation, Rt. Hon. Chibuike Amaechi had expressed shock that Ossai could be hounded on a project that would be of immense benefit to him and his constituents thus:
“It was apparent that the Chairman of the Committee investigating the ‘Loan from China’, Hon. Nicholas Osai, was determined to deny the people of the South-South and the South East the opportunity to be connected by rail”, he stated.
The party Chief urged the constituents of Hon. Osai to, as a matter of urgency, set in motion the necessary processes needed to recall the erring lawmaker for compromising and selling out his people.
He called on the group sponsoring Ossai to be cautious of their actions, stressing that the grand conspiracy to make nonsense of Amaechi’s towering and intimidating political records, by faltering his thoughtful infrastructural programmes in the rail sector, will definitely meet its waterloo.
