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ABUJA. — President Goodluck Jonathan was yesterday urged to hold talks on the future of Nigeria, as the country prepared to mark the centenary of the unification of north and south. The Movement for New Nigeria (MNN), a civil society group made up of a number of different ethnic groups, said a national dialogue was the only way of resolving contentious issues gripping the country.
President Jonathan is facing a political crisis after the defection of a number of high-profile state governors from his ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the loss of his parliamentary majority.
The PDP is riven with infighting amid claims that President Jonathan has disregarded an unwritten rule to rotate the presidency between a candidate from the majority Muslim north and mainly Christian south.
President Jonathan is a southern Christian. The next elections take place in 2015. MNN leader Timi Ogoriba told a news conference in Nigeria’s commercial capital Lagos that it would be a “monumental disaster” if the president walked away from the promised talks.
Nigeria is facing a range of problems from endemic corruption to the sharing of its vast oil wealth and a bloody Islamist insurgency, as well as long-standing ethnic, sectarian and religious differences. — AFP.
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