"Call Clark To Order", Yobe State Governor Tells Jonathan

Yobe State Governor Ibrahim Gaidam has condemned the statement credited to Ijaw leader Chief Edwin Clark, calling for the declaration of a full state of emergency in Yobe, Adamawa and Borno states. In a statement by his Special Adviser on Media, Abdullahi Bego, the governor described Clark as an ethnic champion. The statement reads: “Once again, we are constrained to re-state our position with regard to the state of emergency extended by President Goodluck Jonathan in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states a few weeks ago and comment on the lies, vitriol and provocative statements made by an ethnic champion from the Southsouth, Chief Edwin Clark. “Clark was reported by several news media as repeating his malicious, vindictive and ill-informed call on President Jonathan to declare what he called ‘full emergency rule’ in the three northeast states on the basis of dubious inferences and grounds of null validity. “More gravely, Clark was reported as describing Governors Ibrahim Gaidam (Yobe), Kashim Shettima (Borno) and Murtala Nyako (Adamawa) as “conspirators who are hiding under the guise of opposition to foster their political nests and display their politics of bitterness, hatred, ethnicity and religion to disparage and scuttle Jonathan’s constitutional right to seek a second term as guaranteed by the 1999 Constitution. “First, we condemn in the strongest terms this totally unwarranted attack on the governors. We take the strongest possible exception to Mr. Clark’s vitriolic and totally baseless statements. We ask that he respects his very old age and either speak with decorum and facts or keep quiet. “Second, we ask President Jonathan, in whose defence Clark is apparently speaking, to call him to order and make it clear that he (Jonathan) is the President of the whole country and not a section of it. “This call has become necessary because, by his carriage and utterances, Clark is pretending that he personally made Jonathan president and not Nigerians. “We have said for the umpteenth time that Boko Haram is an evil, ignorant, totally un-Islamic and condemnable ideology which must be fought as a threat to humanity and the country. “It is only Chief Clark who sees this great catastrophe, which requires an all-hands- on-deck approach to resolve, from the prism of politics and ethnicity. How unfortunate and unbecoming of a man who sees himself as an elder statesman. “If the Ijaw leader is making these senseless and baseless statements to deflect attention from the corpus of serious issues which must be addressed by the Jonathan presidency, he has failed and will continue to fail. “Clark would do well to realise that we will always remain focused on issues of substance, will refuse to be distracted and will oppose and condemn his intemperate, insensate, dubious and selfish remarks about our dire situation in the Northeast.”