2015: Ex-Minister Appeals For Calm

Chief Dubem Onyia, a
former Foreign Affairs Minister and member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), has appealed for calm in the run up to the general elections in the country.
Onyia said in a statement issued in Abuja that the elections should not be about President Goodluck Jonathan of the PDP or Gen. Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC) but about Nigeria.
He advised politicians and their followers to show maturity in their conduct so that after the elections, the winner  would be magnanimous enough to accommodate the loser and the loser, humble enough to accept defeat and congratulate the winner.
According to him, Nigeria’s presidency is beyond an individual as it is for the collective interest of the citizens of the country.
He noted that majority of those who fought for the liberation of Nigeria from the shackles of military dictatorship and later congregated into the PDP were now scattered in both the APC and PDP.
The former minister added that members of the two parties “are brothers and should eschew violence in the quest for power’’.
He said that the tension in the polity and collateral damage it could cause could be better imagined than experienced, and advised the electorate to eschew rancour.
He also warned that the 2015 elections should not be shifted for whatever reasons, stressing that “no democrat will ever support a shift of the goal post at the middle of any match, be it football or political.”
“We must keep moving and ensure that we sustain this fragile democracy; we should also learn to put our fatherland first; we don’t want bloodshed.
“We should emulate Ghana, where I have gone severally to observe their elections under the instrumentality of the ECOWAS Commission,” he said.
On the governorship elections in Enugu State, Chief Onyia thanked Gov. Sullivan Chime for giving the people of the State a rare gift in the person of Rep. Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi who, he said, “is not only God-fearing but humble and peaceful’’.
Onyia further commended Chime for his “leadership qualities and statesman disposition to the collective interest of Enugu people”, a development, he said, had thrown up Enugu as the most peaceful PDP State in the country.