Rivers State Governor Rotimi Amaechi has said that he does not need to seek the consent of the President Goodluck Jonathan to contest for the chairmanship position of the Nigerian Governors Forum (NGF).
Amaechi stated this while fielding questions from Shaun Ley on the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Hard Talk programme monitored in Abuja, yesterday.
“Nobody told me not to run. My assumption is that you the journalists in Britain have an association. Would the Prime Minister tell you to run or not to run for a public office? That is the kind of freedom we are looking for in NGF. So I didn’t need to go to the president and say, Mr President, I want to run for the office of the chairman of the Nigeria Governors Forum. I didn’t need to do that and I didn’t do that. And he, in-turn, did not come tell me that, I heard you want to run. So I ran and I didn’t swing the ballot; the person who swapped the ballot is Jonah Jang…I didn’t say I beat him, the result was clear,” he stated.
On his much talked about ambition to run for the office of the vice president on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), he explained: “Let’s work on the assumption that I remain in PDP and let’s also assume work on the assumption that I’m running for the office of the vice president, will my leaving PDP not be an answer to your assumption? Let’s assume the president wants to run in PDP and I remain in PDP that means I have no ambition or those that are assuming I have an ambition will be making a lot of mistakes because the place to pursue that ambition will be in an alternative party. But the reason for being in PDP is because nobody can chase me out of PDP.
– See more at: http://leadership.ng/news/260713/i-don-t-need-president-s-consent-run-office-amaechi#sthash.Cym6Zt6k.dpuf
