President Under Fire!! APC, Lawyers Attack Jonathan Over 90-Hectare Farmland

       The All Progressives Congress and some lawyers have faulted President Goodluck Jonathan’s acquisition of 90.04 hectares of farmland at the Aviation Village in Abuja barely seven months after he was sworn into office.

They said his action was a clear breach of the provisions of section 138 and 5th Schedule of the 1999 Constitution, Parts 1 and 2.

The APC, in a statement on Monday by its National Publicity Secretary, Lai Mohammed, therefore asked Jonathan to apologise for abusing his office and engaging in corrupt practices by acquiring the farmland as a sitting President,Punch reports.

It said nothing could justify the indiscretion exhibited by the President in acquiring such a swath as contained in a newspaper advert which had yet to be refuted by him.

A group, the Purpose Driven Initiative, had in the advertorial claimed that Jonathan incorporated Ebele Integrated Farms Limited which he used to acquire the land.

The APC said the claim by the President’s apologists that their boss got the land because he wanted to engage in farming and that a former President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, did the same while in office, missed the point.

According to the APC, the claim by the apologists that the 5th Schedule, Part 1 (Code of Conduct for Public Officers) of the constitution empowers a President to engage in farming, was also not tenable.

It stated that the issues involved went beyond the fact that a public officer was legally allowed to engage in farming .

‘The Fifth Schedule Part 1(Code of Conduct for Public Officers) of the 1999 Constitution, Section 1 states that, a public officer shall not put himself in a position where his personal interest conflicts with his duties and responsibilities.’

“Would President Jonathan have been given 90.04 hectares of such a prime land were he not a sitting President?,” the APC asked. It said the President leveraged on his office to “grab” the land.

The APC statement partly read, ‘‘What happened in that Abuja land grab is nothing but the height of indiscretion and abuse of office, and cannot be justified or explained away just like that. Without mincing words, it also amounts to corruption, which is defined in part as a perversion of integrity and a glaring instance of bad leadership.”