Former Minister of Information, Chief Edwin Clark has said that the naming of the railway complex in Agbor, Delta State, after Goodluck Jonathan was an insult to the former President and the Ijaw nation.
Clark said instead a national monument should be named after the former President.
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The elder statesman said this while addressing the media on Thursday, insisting that the naming of the station after the ex-President was not a compliment.
Clark noted that Jonathan was the brain behind the resuscitation of rail transportation in Nigeria, particularly the Abuja to Kaduna rail project.
Addressing State House Correspondents after a meeting with President Buhari, Jonathan had described the naming of the station after him as a good gesture.
But Clark believes his kinsman deserves better, saying that Buhari’s gesture was demeaning, maintaining that the ex-President should be given a national honour for ceding power to the current administration in 2015.
According to the Ijaw leader, it was unfair to name Jonathan along with other less prominent citizens of the country in the railway stations naming honours’ list, urging Buhari not do to Jonathan what he would not want to be done to him.
Clark said that even if the ex-President accepted the honour “because he is a gentleman and will not want to complain to Buhari,” his kinsmen will not.
“Jonathan was the President of the whole nation. We don’t like anybody to make a mess of him,” he said.
He said if Jonathan and Awolowo had not been grouped with others, he would probably have accepted the honours.
“I’m using Ameachi to tell Mr. President that what he will not like to be done to him, he should not do it to others,” he said.
