Showing posts with label Edwin Clark. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Edwin Clark. Show all posts

Friday, October 16, 2015

Clark, the father, Jonathan, the son

Chief Edwin Clark
I HAVE tried delaying the writing of this piece in the honest expectation that someone probably misquoted Chief E.K. Clark, when he reportedly publicly disowned former President Goodluck Jonathan.
I had hoped that our dear father, E.K. Clark, would issue a counter statement and say the usual things politicians say: “they quoted me out of context!”  “Jonathan is my son”. That has not happened; rather, some other Ijaw voices, including one Joseph Evah, have come to the defence of the old man, to join hands in rubbishing a man they once defended to the hilt and used as a bargaining chip for the Ijaw interest in the larger Nigerian geo-politics.
If President Jonathan had returned to power on May 29, 2015, these same persons would have remained in the corridors of power, displaying all forms of ethnic triumphalism. It is the reason in case they do not realize it, why the existent power blocs that consider themselves most fit to rule, continue to believe that those whose ancestors never ran empires can never be trusted with power, hence they can only be admitted as other people’s agents or as merchants of their own interests which may even be defined for them as is deemed convenient. Mercantilism may bring profit, but in power politics, it destroys integrity and compromises otherwise sacred values.

Monday, January 6, 2014

Another Open Letter: Obasanjo an egomaniac, says Edwin Clark

Edwin Clark: Obasanjo an egomaniac, mischief maker
Edwin Clark
The season of letter writing may not be over in Nigeria yet as elder statesman and former Minister of Information, Chief Edwin Clark joined the fray to excoriate former President Olusegun Obasanjo over his 18-page letter to President Goodluck Jonathan.
In his 10-page delayed response to Obasanjo, titled: ‘Let The Truth Be Told Before It Is Too Late,’ and made available to P.M.NEWS this morning, Chief Clark described Obasanjo as “a mischief maker” and “an ego maniac who always want to play to the gallery.”
Obasanjo wrote his letter to Jonathan on 2 December last year, titled ‘Before It Is too Late’, triggering a political tremor that is yet to quieten down.
The Ijaw pre-eminent chief and political godfather of President Jonathan, condemned Obasanjo for writing what he called a treasonable letter to the president, adding that Nigeria does not belong to Obasanjo as pointed out by Iyabo Obasanjo in her open letter to her father.