900 pro-Jonathan and PDP groups registered in North East

Political Adviser to the President, Professor Rufa’i Ahmed Alkali said the Presidency screened interest groups supporting President Goodluck Jonathan to know their sponsors and level of commitment.

The screening exercise which started last week Monday ended on Sunday.
Professor Alkali who monitored the exercise in Kaduna on Sunday said many groups have indicated interest to support the President and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) since 2010, but said there was no effort to authenticate them.  

“We discovered that there were over 3000 to 4000 groups calling for President Jonathan to step forward for his campaign for 2015 election. Some of these groups have been there since 2010; they supported the President and the PDP for 2011 elections and some came newly. We realized that these groups have different backgrounds and most of them have been making a lot of efforts to support the party and the transformation agenda of this government. So we saw that it is only fair as we prepare for 2015, we should do screening and evaluation exercise for the groups to know who they are, where they are from , what they are doing, who is behind them and the level of commitment on the project they promised to do.  We set up a committee and send teams to various regions; Bauchi, Benue, Lagos, Kaduna, Enugu and Akwa Ibom.”
Leader of the verification team in the North-West, Usman Sani El-Kudan said “over 900 groups in the region have registered to support the President in the 2015 elections.” He said Kaduna State has the highest number with about 450 support groups followed by Kano with 200 and Sokoto with over 100 groups.