by ‘Jola Sotubo

The Governor of Yobe, Ibrahim Gaidam has urged President Goodluck Jonathan to caution First Republic Information Minister, Edwin Clark on his penchant for making controversial statements.

The Governor described Chief Clark as “ill-informed, malicious and vindictive” and urged him to “respect his very old age and either speak with decorum and facts or keep quiet.”

Governor Gaidam stated this through a statement made available yesterday by his Special Adviser on Press Affairs and Information, Abdullahi Bego.

It reads:

 “Once again, we are constrained to restate our position with regard to the state of emergency extended again by the Goodluck Jonathan administration in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states a few weeks ago and speak to the barefaced lies, vitriol and provocative statements made by one ethnic champion from the South-South part of the country called Mr. Edwin Clark.

“Mr. Clark was reported by several news media, including Vanguard of Wednesday, June 4, 2014, as repeating his malicious, vindictive and ill-informed call on President Goodluck Jonathan to declare what he called ‘full emergency rule’ in the three north-east states of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa on the basis of dubious inferences and grounds of null validity.

“More gravely, Mr. Clark is reported as describing Governors Gaidam of Yobe, Shettima of Borno and Nyako of Adamawa State 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 him (sic) and scuttle Jonathan’s constitutional right to seek a second term as guaranteed by the 1999 constitution.”

The statement further read, “First, we condemn in the strongest terms this totally unwarranted attack on the persons of the three state 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 Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, in whose defence Mr. Clark is apparently speaking, to caution him 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, Mr. Clark is pretending that he personally made Mr. Jonathan president and not the Nigerian people.”