Photos of Obasanjo publicly tearing his PDP membership card
Monday, 16 February 2015
Photos of Obasanjo publicly tearing his PDP membership card.
Saturday, 14 February 2015
Presidency accuses OBJ of plotting political crisis in order to head an interim government.
Presidency accuses OBJ of plotting political crisis in order to head an interim government
We find the false claims and allegations reportedly made against President Goodluck Jonathan by Chief Olusegun Obasanjo on Saturday in Abeokuta very odious and repugnant.
As
we have had cause to say before, it is most regrettable indeed that a
man like Chief Obasanjo, who should know better, chooses to repeatedly,
wantonly, and maliciously impugn the integrity of a sitting President of
his country for the primary purpose of self-promotion.
It
is obvious from Chief Obasanjo’s serial vituperations against President
Jonathan who is doing his best to positively transform Nigeria for the
benefit of all of its people that he has willfully chosen to close his
eyes to the present administration’s good works and intentions. For
reasons best known to him, Chief Obasanjo has set his mind on regime
change by fair or foul means.
Otherwise,
it would be completely senseless, irrational and out of place for Chief
Obasanjo, who still claims to belong to the same party as the
President, to accuse President Jonathan of plotting to win the
rescheduled presidential elections by “hook or crook” and planning to
plunge the nation into crisis if he loses the election.
For
the record, President Jonathan has no such intention and will continue
to give the greatest possible support to the Independent National
Electoral Commission (INEC) and other relevant federal agencies to
ensure that the rescheduled elections are successfully conducted.
Indeed,
it is not President Jonathan who remains faithful to his oath of office
who is trying to plunge Nigeria into crisis, but Chief Obasanjo who is
scheming to plunge the country into chaos in pursuit of a selfish and
highly egocentric agenda.
Chief
Obasanjo’s plot with others within and outside the country to thwart
the general elections and foist an unconstitutional Interim National
Government, which he hopes to head on the nation is well known to us,
but by the Grace of God Almighty, his odious plan to return to power
through the back door will fail woefully.
We
know very well that it is in pursuit of this nefarious plot that the
former President continues to sow the seeds of discord and crises in the
polity by purporting to remain in the ruling party while openly
consorting with the opposition, endorsing its candidates and predicting
victory for opposition candidates in a manner most unbecoming of a
supposed elder statesman. Thankfully, the vast majority of Nigerians who
are patriotic and right-thinking cannot be fooled by Chief Obasanjo’s
antics.
We
urge them to be assured that President Jonathan's commitment to
democracy in all its ramifications remains constant and that he will
never be party to the use of any unlawful means to remain in office or
gain political advantage over his opponents.
The
President stands by his commitment, which he reaffirmed on national
television last Wednesday that on his watch, all elections in Nigeria,
will be free, fair and credible, and that all certified election results
will be respected. As President Jonathan has also assured the nation,
the rescheduling of the general elections was in the best interest of
the nation and was never driven by any ulterior motive on the part of
government as Chief Obasanjo and others have alleged.
President
Jonathan will continue to put his best efforts into giving Nigeria
quality leadership and will not be distracted from his purpose by
unwarranted and needless criticism by persons who ought to know better.
Reuben Abati Special Adviser to the President (Media & Publicity) -
Thursday, 12 February 2015
Nigeria’s Postponed Elections Is An Embarrassment, Bad Choices.
Nigeria’s Postponed Elections Is An Embarrassment, Bad Choices.
BY
Chimamanda Adichie.
Last week,
Victor, a carpenter, came to my Lagos home to fix a broken chair. I asked him
whom he preferred as Nigeria’s next president: the incumbent, Goodluck
Jonathan, or his challenger, Muhammadu Buhari. “I don’t have a voter’s card,
but if I did, I would vote for somebody I don’t like,” he said. “I don’t like
Buhari.
But Jonathan is not performing.” Victor sounded like many people I
know: utterly unenthusiastic about the two major candidates in our upcoming
election. Were Nigerians to vote on likeability alone, Jonathan would win. He
is mild-mannered and genially unsophisticated, with a conventional sense of
humor.
Buhari has a severe, ascetic air about him, a rigid uprightness; it is
easy to imagine him in 1984, leading a military government whose soldiers
routinely beat up civil servants. Neither candidate is articulate. Jonathan is
given to rambling; his unscripted speeches leave listeners vaguely confused.
Buhari is thick-tongued, his words difficult to decipher. In public
appearances, he seems uncomfortable not only with the melodrama of campaigning
but also with the very idea of it. To be a democratic candidate is to implore
and persuade, and his demeanor suggests a man who is not at ease with amiable
consensus. Still, he is no stranger to campaigns.
This is his third run as a
presidential candidate; the last time, in 2011, he lost to Jonathan. This time,
Buhari’s prospects are better. Jonathan is widely perceived as ineffectual, and
the clearest example, which has eclipsed his entire presidency, is his response
to Boko Haram. Such a barbaric Islamist insurgency would challenge any
government. But while Boko Haram bombed and butchered, Jonathan seemed frozen
in a confused, tone-deaf inaction. Conflicting stories emerged of an
ill-equipped army, of a corrupt military leadership, of northern elites
sponsoring Boko Haram, and even of the government itself sponsoring Boko Haram.
Jonathan floated to power, unprepared, on a serendipitous cloud. He was a
deputy governor of Bayelsa state who became governor when his corrupt boss was
forced to quit. Chosen as vice president because powerbrokers considered him
the most harmless option from southern Nigeria, he became president when his
northern boss died in office. Nigerians gave him their goodwill—he seemed
refreshingly unassuming—but there were powerful forces who wanted him out,
largely because he was a southerner, and it was supposed to be the north’s
‘turn’ to occupy the presidential office. And so the provincial outsider
suddenly thrust onto the throne, blinking in the chaotic glare of competing
interests, surrounded by a small band of sycophants, startled by the hostility
of his traducers, became paranoid. He was slow to act, distrustful and
diffident.
His mildness came across as cluelessness. His response to criticism
calcified to a single theme: His enemies were out to get him. When the Chibok
girls were kidnapped, he and his team seemed at first to believe that it was a
fraud organized by his enemies to embarrass him. His politics of defensiveness
made it difficult to sell his genuine successes, such as his focus on the
long-neglected agricultural sector and infrastructure projects. His
spokespeople alleged endless conspiracy theories, compared him to Jesus Christ,
and generally kept him entombed in his own sense of victimhood. The delusions
of Buhari’s spokespeople are better packaged, and obviously free of
incumbency’s crippling weight.
They blame Jonathan for everything that is wrong
with Nigeria, even the most multifarious, ancient knots. They dismiss
references to Buhari’s past military leadership, and couch their willful
refusal in the language of ‘change,’ as though Buhari, by representing change
from Jonathan, has also taken on an ahistorical saintliness. I remember the
Buhari years as a blur of bleakness. I remember my mother bringing home sad
rations of tinned milk, otherwise known as “essential commodities”—the
consequences of Buhari’s economic policy.
I remember air thick with fear, civil
servants made to do frog jumps for being late to work, journalists imprisoned,
Nigerians flogged for not standing in line, a political vision that cast
citizens as recalcitrant beasts to be whipped into shape. Buhari’s greatest
source of appeal is that he is widely perceived as non-corrupt. Nigerians have
been told how little money he has, how spare his lifestyle is. But to sell the
idea of an incorruptible candidate who will fight corruption is to rely on the
disingenuous trope that Buhari is not his party.
Like Jonathan’s People’s
Democratic Party, Buhari’s All Progressives Congress is stained with
corruption, and its patrons have a checkered history of exploitative
participation in governance. Buhari’s team is counting on the strength of his
perceived personal integrity: his image as a good guy forced by realpolitik to
hold hands with the bad guys, who will be shaken off after his victory. In my
ancestral home state of Anambra, where Jonathan is generally liked, the
stronger force at play is a distrust of Buhari, partly borne of memories of his
military rule, and partly borne of his reputation, among some Christians, as a
Muslim fundamentalist.
When I asked a relative whom she would vote for, she
said, “Jonathan of course. Am I crazy to vote for Buhari so that Nigeria will
become a sharia country?” Nigeria has predictable voting patterns, as all
democratic countries do. Buhari can expect support from large swaths of the
core north, and Jonathan from southern states. Region and religion are potent
forces here. Vice presidents are carefully picked with these factors in mind:
Buhari’s is a southwestern Christian and Jonathan’s is a northern Muslim. But
it is not so simple. There are non-northerners who would ordinarily balk at
voting for a ‘northerner’ but who support Buhari because he can presumably
fight corruption.
There are northern supporters of Jonathan who are not part of
the region’s Christian minorities. Delaying the elections is a staggeringly
self-serving act of contempt for Nigerians. Last week, I was indifferent about
the elections, tired of television commercials and contrived controversies.
There were rumors that the election, which was scheduled for February 14, would
be postponed, but there always are; our political space is a lair of
conspiracies. I was uninterested in the apocalyptic predictions. Nigeria was
not imploding. We had crossed this crossroads before, we were merely electing a
president in an election bereft of inspiration.
And the existence of a real
opposition party that might very well win was a sign of progress in our young
democracy. Then, on Saturday, the elections were delayed for six weeks.
Nigeria’s security agencies, we were told, would not be available to secure the
elections because they would be fighting Boko Haram and needed at least another
month and a half to do so. (Nigeria has been fighting Boko Haram for five
years, and military leaders recently claimed to be ready for the elections.)
Even if the reason were not so absurd, Nigerians are politically astute enough
to know that the postponement has nothing to do with security. It is a flailing
act of desperation from an incumbent terrified of losing. There are fears of
further postponements, of ploys to illegally extend Jonathan’s term.
In a
country with the specter of a military coup always hanging over it, the
consequences could be dangerous. My indifference has turned to anger. What a
staggeringly self-serving act of contempt for Nigerians. It has cast, at least
for the next six weeks, the darkest possible shroud over our democracy:
uncertainty.
Chimamanda
Adichie is an award winning writer and author of bestsellers including Purple
Hibiscus, Half of a Yellow Sun, The Thing Around Your Neck and Americanah.
www.skytyms.blogspot.com
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