President Goodluck Jonathan has been assured he will get a minimum of four million votes in the South-West to ensure his re-election in the 2015 presidential poll.
The assurance was given by a group called G15 Victory Platform, which said its primary mission was “to secure total victory” for the President “throughout Nigeria in general and the South-West in particular.”
In a statement made available to SUNDAY PUNCH on Friday, the group boasted it would get more than the targeted figure.
“So far, with the level of acceptance and goodwill expressed by the masses for Mr. President, we are confident of surpassing our target. To ensure that we are not chasing shadows, we have put in place a monitoring device to determine our growth rate, for example, we have the names, the phone numbers of all our members in our database including their voter card numbers.
According to G15 National Director-General, Igbasan Emmanuel, the group’s aim is not impossible to achieve, adding that the All Progressives Congress will lose out to the Peoples Democratic Party’s endorsed candidate.
He said, “In 2011 presidential election, more people voted for the president than they voted for the candidate of the opposition. Greater number of people will equally vote for Mr. President in the forthcoming election because ordinary Nigerians believe in President Jonathan.”
Igbasan added in the statement that Lagos State would not be an obstacle in winning the south-west for PDP in the election, arguing that whatever success Governor Babatunde Fashola has recorded in his eight-year tenure is at the detriment of the masses.
“The achievement of Governor Fashola, which came at a huge cost to the poor masses, will not affect the chances of Mr. President. On the contrary, the poor masses upon whose votes the governor came into office, who are now marginalised and short-changed have vowed to vote massively for the PDP in the forthcoming elections,” the G15 director-general said.
The group, while acknowledging that the Jonathan administration had not given much consideration to the south-west in terms of political appointments according to the zoning pattern in the PDP, pledged that it would not fail to deliver the region to the president.
Commenting on the current security challenges in the country, Igbasan noted, “It is true that we are facing dire security challenges all over the country at the moment, but everything possible is being done by the Federal Government to make Nigeria a safe and secure nation for all. That the terrorists have been curtailed to just three states is a pass mark given the backdrop that their mission was the total Islamisation of Nigeria.
“Rather than politicising security issues all hands must be on deck to checkmate the bad elements in our midst. The state governors must allow the quick passage of Local Government autonomous Bill so that LGAs can perform their constitutional roles of chief security officer of their respective councils. Every nation has its own measure of security breach. The supreme sacrifices paid by our gallant soldiers on the war front should not be sacrificed on the altar of selfish politicking.”
Source: Punch
