2015: 8,000 groups root for Jonathan – Presidency

By Lawrence Olaoye

Special Adviser to President Goodluck Jonathan, Professor Rufa’i Ahmed Alkali, yesterday disclosed that the support groups rooting for his principal to contest the 2015 Presidential election have risen from 3000 to about 8000.

Alkali made the disclosure while receiving the report of the special committee chaired by General A.T. Ibrahim (rtd) which he inaugurated few weeks ago to restructure the Goodluck Support Group (GSG).

According to him, all the officers saddled with the responsibility of carrying out this exercise went to the six geo-political zones and the FCT for the task.

“I am pleased to inform you that one of the preliminary observation from the report of the team is that contrary to our earlier position that there were about 3, 000 groups rooting for Mr. President, we now have more than 7, 000 (Seven thousand) Support Groups nationwide all calling on President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan to declare for the Presidential race.

“Indeed, initially we printed 5,000 forms that were distributed to the NGOs and other Support Groups, but the forms soon ran out and we had to print additional 2,000. As I am speaking to you now, we have at least another 1,000 groups demanding to be screened.

“With the report of the Screening and Evaluation Committee now submitted to us, we are going to the next level. That is to say, we shall undertake content analysis of the reports with a view to properly positioning the various support groups for the challenges of the 2015 general election.

 “We want to assure every support group irrespective of their sizes, from two-man group to 20 million-man group, that they are all important to us and we shall carry them along.

Alkali appealed to the pro-Jonathan groups to commence process of stepping down the structure and operations of their organizations to the Zonal, State, Local Government Areas up to the Ward level.

In his response the chairman of the committee, General Ibrahim said in the course of carrying out their assignment they went round the country and interacted with various interest groups.

He said the interactive sessions were eye opener as it brought to the fore the huge number of Nigerians that are appreciative of the success recorded by the Jonathan’s administration.