Emmanuel Addeh in Yenagoa
Ex-President Goodluck Jonathan’s kinsmen, mainly from Ogbia, Bayelsa State, where the former Nigerian leader hails from, on Monday rose in defence of one of their own, insisting that any plan to tarnish Jonathan’s rising international profile would be resisted by his people.
They spoke on Monday in Yenagoa, the state capital, against the backdrop of allegations by some former militant groups that Jonathan was the mastermind behind the violent Niger Delta Avengers which has vowed to cripple the country’s oil and gas infrastructure in the Niger Delta.
The Ogbia Brotherhood, one of the most influential groups from the axis, described the insinuations that the ex-president was behind the bombings as malicious, spurious, baseless and unwarranted.
Leader of the group, Chief Benson Agadaga, a former Commissioner in the state, called on security agencies to unravel the masquerades perpetuating the economic sabotage and the smear campaign against the ex-President and put a halt to the propaganda currently going on.
Jonathan’s kinsmen described the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, MEND’s, recent attack on the person of the erstwhile president as ‘sinister’, noting that no amount of mud thrown at the former President would erase his democratic credentials.
At the press conference, the National Chairman of the body, who spoke on behalf of the executive members, said the allegations were not only false, baseless and mischievous but equally wicked.
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