The many contradictions in Jonathan’s Lagos campaign speech BY ONLINE EDITOR · JANUARY 9, 2015 81 107 It was undoubtedly President Goodluck Jonathan’s most pugnacious public speech on record. The president was pumped up as he tore into his opponent, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, the All Progressives Congress, APC candidate in the forthcoming election. The president rolled out many achievements of his administrations in many sectors including education, transportation, agriculture and many others. He notably forgot the most remarkable achievement of his administration in the Southwest – the reconstruction of the Lagos-Ibadan expressway. However, the speech was laced with many contradictions as pointed out hereunder Today, I am going to address only a segment of the Nigerian population. I am going to address the people who are voting for the first time, those of you who will attain 18 years this year. The president said he was addressing those who would be attaining 18 years this year. The president’s intention actually was to focus on the youths but in saying those who would be attaining 18 years this year and who would reach voting age, he inadvertently limited himself to the fraction the one-twelfth fraction that would reach voting age by February 14. I am addressing the young people. I do not want to address old people like me, because we are spent already! The president said he and his generation were spent and finished. What then would Nigerians be looking for from a generation that is finished? I am going to address political gatherings in 37 cities and I am going to dwell on three key things. I am focusing on the young people. The president has put himself on the spot. Given that he has not visited Borno and Yobe States to condole the people of the states despite the repeated attacks, his visit during election time would be bound to elicit criticisms that he only cares for votes. Already you have been told from intelligence reports that some people are already cloning cards so that your voter’s card will no longer be relevant. Is that the kind of people you want to take over government? (Crowd shouts NO…!) The president echoed the charge of cloning of INEC voter cards made by the Department of State Services, DSS an allegation that remains in the realm of political disputations and has not been proven. Nigeria must move forward, Nigeria is for the youths. Nigeria is not for old people like us. The young generation must redefine this country. We must take this country to where we want it to be. Nobody can push us backwards. The past is past. They have led us backward and backward. If the president meant that he and his generation have failed then the question why does he want another term? When we were young, we were told that at Independence, Nigeria, Brazil, Malaysia, Indonesia and even India were all at the same level. That was what we were told when I was in the secondary school and the university. Now all those countries have left us behind and now some people want to take us backward. Is it that the president does not want Nigeria to be at parity with the countries he referred to? What exactly did he mean? They instigated crisis and now they are telling us they will fight insurgency. The president could be asked to prove how Buhari instigated the crisis that led to the insurgency. If they had succeeded in fighting corruption, corruption would not have been with us here today. If they had set up structures and especially in today’s modern science using ICT to manage resources, we would not have been talking about corruption today. What happened in December was that IPPIS, software for processing salaries, — sometimes people steal through salaries- and some federal government agencies including some ministries tried to divert funds to pay some allowances. The system is scientific, it is not a human being, and as long as money meant for salaries is about to be diverted to other things, it shuts down. Those departments of government were shut down, this is the only way that you can prevent corruption. (Crowd claps …) The president’s response on fighting corruption through the procurement of software for salary payments is rather puzzling. Armed robbery is still with us, despite the fact that we are shooting (death penalty) armed robbers. Is that stopping armed robbery? (Crowd shouts NO…!) The president said that armed robbery is still in the country despite the fact that armed robbers are still being shot. Armed robbers have not been officially shot in Nigeria for decades. When the crisis of insecurity came up, we had nothing. So to get things very quickly, we used some vendors to make procurement. But now what we are doing is government to government. Now any new procurement we are doing whether for the air force, navy or army it’s government to government, so there is nothing like corruption anymore. Even if we have some issues, maybe… is that not the way to fight corruption? The president admitted there is no more corruption but in the same breadth admitted that there used to be corruption. So what happened in those cases and how was it punished? You must prevent people from touching money, you don’t give them the opportunity or test them with money and this is what government is doing and we are succeeding in a number of areas in our procurement processes. The president asserts that the best way to fight corruption is to prevent people from touching or seeing money. That would be troubling to many associates of the president as it would mean that the sight of money leads to corruption. They say we are weak because there were some people who took our fathers, our mothers and our uncles while they were abroad put them in a crate and flew them to Nigeria but they were intercepted by superior powers. That blocked Nigerians from even going to Britain at a time and the relationship between Nigeria and Britain… the whole world isolated Nigeria. They said that is the way to fight corruption. So immediately I suspect your uncle, I can just crate him and throw him into Kirikiri. Is that the way to stop corruption? This reference to the abduction of Umaru Dikko by agents of the Buhari junta mixed up many facts. The president said ‘our fathers, our mothers and our uncles’ were kidnapped. Only Dikko was kidnapped but he was never flown out of Britain as the president said and there was as such no interception mid air. True the incidence led to a rupture in Nigeria’s relations with Britain but it was only limited to Britain and it wasn’t the world that was united against Nigeria. I read a headline in one paper yesterday: MEND DUMPS JONATHAN… did you read it? I am from the Niger Delta. The leader of MEND is one Okah. He is in South African prison. Why is he there? South Africa is not Nigeria where people will say Oh, President (Jonathan) manipulated it. Okah is in the prison because 1st October 2010 when we were to celebrate our independence, our golden year of independence, Okah was procured by some Nigerians to assassinate me. Okah bombed Abuja, but the attempt was to assassinate me and South Africa intelligence system caught him in the plan to assassinate me. He is now in jail in South Africa and they say MEND dumps Jonathan. The president’s assertion is a direct contradiction of what he said after the bombing when he acquitted MEND of culpability in the shooting. The question raised against the president was why did he wait till MEND endorsed Buhari to accuse MEND of the assassination plot.
Posted on: Sat, 10 Jan 2015 16:34:15 +0000
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