I never thought I'd sit with Gowon in Council of State -Jonathan

PUNCH 

Former President Goodluck Jonathan has said he could never have imagined being in the same meeting as an ex-President with former head of state, Yakubu Gowon.

“I said Gowon was a very young man, young, but then, he was the Head of State when I was in primary 5. Then, Diete-Spiff was our first military governor (Rivers State), A very young man at 24. When I was in primary 5, I couldn’t have imagined that one day, I would be a retired president, sitting with Gowon in the Council of State meeting.”

The ex-President further commended Gowon for his contributions to keeping Nigeria one during his tenure as Head of State.

The former President made this disclosure on Thursday at the International Conference Centre, Abuja during the public presentation of the autobiography of elder statesman, Edwin Clark.

Titled, “Brutally Frank,” the book tells the story of a man who became a Commissioner for Education in the defunct Mid-West Region in 1967 at the invitation of the then Governor, Col Samuel Ogbemudia, and rose to become Federal Commissioner for Information…