Speaking in an interview with Sunday Sun, he admitted that the immediate past President did well for the country such as in the unbundling of the power sector, but that for them in the Niger-Delta, “I can’t say what we gained from a President that comes from our place.”
The ex-Minister, who served under the first tenure of former President, Olusegun Obasanjo, while lamenting that not a single federal project was executed by Jonathan in Akwa Ibom state, expressed sadness that “Even in his home town, Otueke, nothing really was done there.”
As regards the federal university the former President attracted to his hometown, Okopido said: “the lecturers of that University who were living in a rented apartments were later ejected because the rents of the apartments were not paid.
He said that not even a permanent structure has been erected in that University which is a federal institution to allow academic work there to go on the way it should.
“I don’t know but those issues appear to be very simple that one wouldn’t have expected that they would be done before he left. Is it because he was looking for whom to fear before he could do such things in his own town? I don’t know. I can’t understand it. He couldn’t do anything tangible in his own place.”
While commending President Muhammadu Buhari for ordering the clean up of Ogoni land by setting aside
“one billion dollar seed money” for the project, he said: “Mr. President has shown that commitment like he said that he is a President for everybody. For him to have given that money means that he loves the people. Somebody in there for 5 years did nothing about it and he is from the place.”
According to him, “There is this issue of oil well number 1. When he was the Deputy Governor of Bayelsa
State, I made him to be a member of a committee to clean up the Niger Delta, I was the Minister then. Oil well I, that is, the first oil well in the country at Oloibiri was to be given a priority. And President Obasanjo at that time approved it.
“Till he left, President Jonathan did nothing about well 1 at Oloibiri which is in his local government area. It is a sad story. So, when we see somebody who came in to show leadership, show concern for the people, to release that money, as seed money to ginger that project, to clean up Ogoniland, I am very pleased and I say kudos to Mr. President. We ask God to continue to direct him to look into the welfare of this country.”
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