OPC backs President Goodluck Jonathan

The O'odua Peoples Congress (OPC), a pan-Yoruba group, has called on President Goodluck Jonathan to ignore those calling for his resignation.

Addressing journalists in Lagos on Tuesday, the founder of the group, Frederick Fasheun, said Jonathan's resignation would set bad precedence.

"It will be a bad precedence for a President to leave his office because of terrorists demanding his removal. We cannot override the National Assembly to remove him," Fasheun said.

Some of Jonathan's antagonists calling for his resignation include controversial Pastor, Tunde Bakare, and,recently, the Northern chapter of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN).

The president has recently been pressured by other individuals and groups to resign from his position because of his failure to tackle security challenges in the country, particularly in the northern region.

Fasheun questioned Nigerians' patriotism in the face of the current challenges confronting the nation.

"Everybody is thinking of his primordial interest above national interest. Nobody seems genuinely committed to the unity of Nigeria, which is very worrisome,'' he said.

He,however, identified the need for a sovereign national conference in the quest for reforming the country.

"We have been calling for a sovereign national conference to solve our national question. If we don't sit down together to negotiate our future, Nigeria will implode and pass into history," he said.

"If we continue to patch this pseudo-federalism together by the glue of the faulty 1999 constitution, the ethnic nationalities will continue to wallow in suspicion, hunger, anger, poverty, ignorance and superstition."

Fasheun also stressed the need for a collaborative effort to save the country from its state of near-collapse and prevent a second civil war.

"No country has ever survived two civil wars. We have experienced one. Another civil war will be Nigeria's Armageddon,'' he added.