PDP Elders Claim Jonathan Traded Bayelsa to Free Himself, Wife from Prosecution

A group, People’s Democratic Party (PDP) Elders Forum has expressed deep worry over the conduct of former President Goodluck Jonathan in the November 16 Bayelsa governorship election.

David Lyon of the All Progressives Congress (APC) was declared winner of the election which the PDP had insisted was rigged in favor APC backed by the Federal Government.

The PDP Elders Forum in a statement issued by its Chairman Chief Benson Odoko in Yenagoa criticized the former president for openly fraternizing with the APC, the party’s main opponent in the election, noting that the former president, by his recent actions, did not leave anybody in doubt that he was supporting the APC against the very party that made him Deputy Governor, Governor, Vice President and President of the country.

He said that the former president who visited President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa in Abuja for an undisclosed mission just before the election kept his distance from the PDP and its members throughout the period of the campaigns leading to the election.

Odoko who recalled that Jonathan also refused to congratulate the PDP governorship candidate, Senator Douye Diri who served him as Commissioner for Sports when he was governor, stated that the Forum was shocked when Jonathan and his wife donated the Aridolf Hotel to the APC as the operational contact point for visiting dignitaries of the party and as the venue for the party’s controversial primaries.

The Forum’s chairman said that what was even more stupefying was the visit to President Jonathan by APC leaders shortly after the charade called election and another visit by the leader of the APC in the state, Chief Timipre Sylva, the candidate of the APC in the election, Chief David Lyon, and others to the Jonathans.

According to him he said that these actions of Jonathan clearly portrayed him as having betrayed the PDP which gave him the platform to occupy the highest positions in the country, Bayelsa State, and millions of PDP members just to protect his selfish interest.

He argued that the argument that Jonathan worked against the PDP because his preferred candidate, Chief Timi Alaibe, lost in the primaries was a pathetic perfidy meant to cover up the real reasons for this betrayal against Bayelsans and Nigerians.

Odoko called on the national leadership of the PDP to invoke disciplinary action against Jonathan for working against his party and openly celebrating an opposition victory against the party which made him president.