GEJ Supporter Desmond Elliot Makes U-Turn

By Osagie Alonge

From the look of things, it seems like Nollywood actor Desmond Elliot has taken a U-turn on his support for Present Goodluck Jonathan, going by his recent outbursts, and his presence at the Mass Protest in Ojota, Lagos yesterday.

Just yesterday, Tuesday, January 10, 2012, the actor took to his Twitter account to express disappointment in President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration and other politicians.

‘We have lost everything we met on the land. Cocoa, palm oil, groundnuts, cotton, cashew and rubber have been forgotten and are better produced by nations who came to learn from us. We have lost our moral compass, our society is fractured, our statehood is threatened. Our citizens are in all prisons around the world. Some of them prefer foreign prisons to coming back to Nigeria. Our passport is treated with disdain everywhere you present it. Why should our government be this big with special advisers on cassava and beans affairs?’,@Deselliot tweeted.

With the recent removal of fuel subsidy and subsequent labour strike, the president has received heavy criticism from Nigerians home and abroad. Several senior citizens home and abroad have joined labour groups, calling on the President to reverse the January 1 removal of fuel subsidy and curb corruption in high places.

‘Do we need 36 ministers? Why would our president spend close to spend a billion on food while close to eighty per cent live on less than a dollar a day? Why should he budget a billion for generators and diesel when he is urging us to believe in his power sector reform? Why does our President need 6 private jets? Why should our politicians keep their salaries when Obama slashed his? Why should we continue to be wasteful when the handwriting on the wall says “danger”? Why should we believe the government when it says the subsidy gain will be properly reinvested? Bad leadership and corruption must stop’, Elliot’s lengthy tweet reads.

And it’s rather surprising, because Elliot was one of the many Nollywood actors that had endorsed Goodluck Jonathan months before the April 2011 polls.

The actor had featured alongside colleagues Ramsey Noah, Genevieve, Monalisa Chinda, Stephanie Okereke, Ini Edo, and Olu Jacobs in a campaign ad urging Nigerians to vote for ‘One Man’, Goodluck Jonathan. ‘Now you know, we are not as divided as our politics suggests’, Elliot said in the ad.

Watch the campaign ad below…