He said the conference was the only solution to the menace of the violent Islamist sect, Boko Haram, whose members are currently executing a bombing campaign against military and police facilities and churches especially in the northern states and Abuja.
“Whether he likes it or not, Goodluck Jonathan must convoke an SNC. There is a need for a national discourse and dialogue. It is only an SNC that will solve the problem. The solution to the Boko Haram crisis is to dissolve the government and convoke an SNC,” Dokubo-Asari told journalists at the meeting with youths of the Niger Delta in Abuja.
The ex-Niger Delta militant warned that if the Boko Haram issue could lead to another civil war if not tackled on time. He said the sect’s “arrogance” was unIslamic.
“The arrogance of Boko Haram is un-Islamic. The level of bombs they are using is low. If we begin throwing bombs, nobody will stay in Abuja,” the man who claimed to have started arms struggle in the oil rich Niger Delta said.
While threatening that the Niger Delta youths would retaliate if any evil should befall Jonathan, Dokubo-Asari however said the President had failed in the governance of the country.
“We are saying that nothing must happen to Goodluck Jonathan because if anything happens to him, the world will know.
“But we are not saying Goodluck Jonathan has tried. He has failed. What is Godswill Orubebe (Minister of Niger Delta) still doing in the federal cabinet? If Orubebe has failed, Jonathan has failed.
“A time will come if he didn’t change, our people would say, Goodluck, you are on your own. He has every power and every moral authority to convoke a Sovereign National Conference. He must correct the 55 years of injustice against us.”
On the face-off between ex-dictator Ibrahim Babangida and leader of the Ijaw nation/First Republic Minister of Information, Edwin Clark, over the Boko Haram menace, the NDPVF leader said IBB and former Head of State, General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), had no hands in the violence unleashed on the country by the sect.
Clark last week had accused Babangida of alleged complicity in the Boko Haram activities thus attracting a response from the ex-dictator camp that the first republic minister “is a loose cannon in public discourse.”
Dokubo-Asari said, “I want to be fair to IBB and Buhari on the Boko Haram crisis. They have nothing to do and cannot do anything about it. But the fact remains that the political elite of which IBB and Buhari belongs have not been able to address the problem of Boko Haram.
“They cannot do anything because nobody wants to commit suicide. The Boko Haram people are just killing themselves but cannot kill us.”
He also faulted the amnesty programme of the Federal Government which he said amounted to bribery and blackmail.
“The Amnesty is a bribe. I did not partake in the amnesty programme. That amnesty will not work because it amounts to criminalising people on account of kidnapping and they will later be settled. Amnesty was just a bribe for the oil to flow,” he said.
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