Tag: Jonathan

IT was thought that ex-president Goodluck Jonathan made the most startling off-the-cuff presidential remarks during his time in office. That reputation, though richly earned, is in jeopardy today with the way President Muhammadu Buhari is startling the country with his remarks both within the country and outside. Skip all the president’s foreign trips in his first year in office, for evidently his remarks on those occasions have left everyone breathless, if not perplexed. Instead, concentrate on last Monday’s revelatory remarks during the luncheon he had with State House correspondents to mark his first year in office. He spoke elegantly about Dr Jonathan, whom many thought was being primed for either arrest or embarrassment. Then he made brief reference to his old nemesis, the judiciary. And finally, at least for Barometer, the president also made very fleeting reference to his ‘mono-cultural and mono-political’ anti-corruption war.
First, Dr Jonathan. The president told the correspondents he was still in shock over the swiftness with which his predecessor conceded defeat in the 2015 presidential election. Said he: “Dr Jonathan called me at a quarter past five in the evening. He said good evening Your Excellency Sir, and I said good evening. He said ‘I have called to congratulate you; I have conceded defeat’. Of course, there was dead silence on my end because I did not expect it. I was shocked. I did not expect it because after 16 years, the man was a deputy governor, governor, Vice President and was President for six years. For him to have conceded defeat even before the result was announced by INEC, I think it was quite generous and gracious of him. Abdulsalam recognised the generosity of Jonathan to concede defeat and said we should go and thank him immediately and that was the first time I came here.”
Now, there are already side talks about why President Buhari spoke so glowingly of the Jonathan concession, even though it was not the first time he would appreciate what his predecessor did. Some commentators suggest that his laudatory remarks on Dr Jonathan indicate that the former president’s arrest or embarrassment is not on the cards, and that, given the ferment in the Niger Delta, it is crucial to secure the friendship of perhaps the only man with enough clout and leverage to engage the militants in fruitful discussions. Only President Buhari can put the lie to that fantastic supposition. No one can, however, deny the fact that some sort of gentleman’s agreement was reached before the fateful presidential election of 2015. President Buhari gave his word that Dr Jonathan had nothing to fear, and he would be wary of reneging on it. So far, too, the president has been ethereally quiet about Dr Jonathan despite the buzz around the topic of corruption and the former president’s involvement.
Perhaps there is some truth in the fact that President Buhari meant more to his salutary talk about Dr Jonathan than the superficial import of appreciating his nobility. Indeed, did the president not go ahead to meet with the former president shortly after the fine remarks? But it is also true that he gave no indication at any time that the government, through the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), was about to move against Dr Jonathan. It is even truer that the world, which before the 2015 polls viewed a possible explosion in Nigeria with horror, has continued to see Dr Jonathan’s concession with boundless admiration. They in fact gave the impression that whatever corruption stain was traced to the former president is made less significant by that singular act of political and electoral magnanimity. Consequently, they have serenaded him with awards, some quite unheard of. The dilemma the president will face, it seems, is that the more he tries to shield Dr Jonathan from interdiction, the more those facing EFCC interrogation or prosecution will try to rope the former president in their larcenous schemes in order to mitigate their looting spree. President Buhari will find it hard to walk the tight rope, for he made the rope tight himself.
Whether out of conviction or reluctantly, the president also told the correspondents he would be mindful of the way he talked about the judiciary in the anti-corruption war. “We can’t go out and talk too much. We have to allow the judiciary to do their work. We give them the facts, the name, country, bank account. If you talk too much, technicalities will come in, then, we will realize less than what we want to realize.” It is unlikely the president is being overly cynical; maybe just a little. He used to have some pretty unorthodox opinions of the judiciary in the giddy early months of his presidency, especially flowing from his electoral debacles between 2003 and 2011. He then transferred that aggression, without substantiation, to the judiciary’s attitude to his anti-corruption war. But either because of internal criticism or his appreciation of the way developed countries handle their judiciaries, President Buhari has moderated his perception. At any rate, whether affected or out of conviction, the president now appears to have a healthier perspective of how the judiciary works in the criminal justice system, and he also now recognises that he has the leeway and the resources to make it function better. After all, in his own words, without doing right by the judiciary, the international community who are the custodians of the loot Nigeria wants returned would remain uncooperative.

Former President Goodluck Jonathan sneaked into the State House, Abuja on Thursday night for a secret meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari, 24 hours after the  return of the ex-president from a six-week long trip abroad.

 News of the meeting began to circulate yesterday a few hours after Buhari met separately with former President    Olusegun Obasanjo and a delegation of Anglican bishops led by the Primate of the church, Archbishop Nicholas Okoh.

There was no official confirmation of Jonathan’s  visit, but a reliable source said the meeting took place at about 9pm when reporters and most workers at the seat of power had gone for the day.

Obasanjo, who was accompanied by his long-standing friend, Chief Oyewole Fasawe, was driven into the Presidential Villa complex at about 12 noon..

Obasanjo declined to speak to reporters on his mission to the villa,his third since Buhari aasumed office a little over a year ago.

Shortly  after his departure, the Anglican bishops arrived.

President Buhari,  at the meeting with the bishops, said  while the rescue and safe return of the remaining Chibok girls remained  a priority of his administration, it would  not fall for the antics of fraudsters who have been asking the Federal Government for money for the purpose of negotiating  the release the girls.

Buhari, in a statement by the Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, said that his administration would  continue to insist on a thorough authentication of the identities  of any persons or groups claiming to have custody of the girls before entering into negotiations with them.

He, however, assured the Anglican bishops of his steadfast commitment to the rescue of the Chibok girls, stressing that their safe return will be one of his greatest fulfilments in office as President.

The President also assured the clerics that the Federal Government would give maximum attention to the clean-up of Ogoniland which was launched on Thursday.

‘‘We inherited the United Nations Environmental Project report from the previous administration. We decided it needed urgent attention, in spite of the economic crunch because of our concern for the welfare and environmental comfort of the people of Ogoniland,’’ he said.

Archbishop Okoh told State House correspondents at the end of the meeting that they discussed the herdsmen attacks across the country and oil pipeline vandalism in the Niger Delta region with their host.

“We told him many things.We are all looking for solution to issues of the herdsmen, vandalism and security in one way or the other because the people are asking us and we want to have explanations for the people we lead,” he said.

Asked what the president’s disposition was to the issues,he said:”Very favourable.He gave us detailed explanations of what he is doing to ensure that these things are solved.

“So we have hope, we have a message for our people.”

Okoh opined that the President spent his first year in office clearing the table,  and  was optimistic that things will improve in the country over the next one year.

“We believe that so far it has been okay because of the difficulties of the times and between now and the next one year we are looking forward  to something that will get to the people easily,” he said.

“So far, for the first year he is trying to clear the table, prepare the place, make the work move forward.

“We look forward to a better 2016-2017 budget. You can see that with the long delay in budget, the issue of padding we were not able to begin easily.

“So the next one we know will be better. That is why we are taking it that way.It’s okay for now but it could be better.”

A newspaper report last week claimed that Jonathan was on exile after being tipped off that government had ordered his arrest in connection with alleged massive corruption during his tenure.

The report suggested that he had landed in Cote D’Ivoire on his way from the UK to seek asylum.

The former president swiftly dismissed the report as imaginary.

He said it was the latest attempt to embarrass him and link him with the resurgence of violence in the Niger Delta.

The Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) has launched a series of attacks on oil facilities in the geo-political zone as part of the pressure to excise the zone from the rest of the country.

•It was great generosity, great patriotism

One year after the 2015 Presidential election and assumption in office, President Muhammadu Buhari yesterday declared that he was shocked that former President Goodluck Jonathan conceded defeat to him.

The action, he said, was a great generosity and a great patriotism.

He spoke during a Presidential Lunch for State House correspondents at the New Banquet Hall of the Presidential Villa.

He said: “I underrated the influence of the PDP for 16 years watching from outside. The experience of the staff, their commitment and zeal is different from what it is now. 16 years of development in the life of a developing nation is a long time.

“This is where I pay my respect to former President Goodluck Jonathan. This is actually a privileged information for you. He called me at a quarter past five in the evening. He said ‘good evening your Excellency Sir’, and I said ‘good evening’.

“He said ‘I have called to congratulate you that I have conceded defeat’. Of course, there was dead silence on my end, because I did not expect it. I was shocked. I did not expect it because after sixteen years, the man was a deputy governor, governor, Vice President and was President for six years.

“For him to have conceded defeat even before the result was announced by INEC, I think it was a great generosity, a great patriotism.

“Abdulsalami recognised the generosity of Jonathan to concede defeat and said we should go and thank him immediately and that was the first time I came here.”

According to him, his administration had to trim down the number of ministries from 42 ministries we cut it to 24 and scaling down of the number of permanent secretaries in order to save cost of running government.

He added that most of the permanent secretaries that were there for over five to seven years only knew how things were done in the previous years.

He said that the past one year was a tumultuous year for everyone in the Villa.

Talking about his experience in Aso Villa, he said: “Whatever we did in the campaign, in fact we were saying rubbish and that made it very difficult for us. Things were even more difficult during the budget which you all know about.

“For somebody like me, for the first time I heard what is called padding. I think we will recover by the fourth quarter of the year, what padding means especially for ministers who had implement what padding contains. There were very serious development which I never knew about.

“So really it was a nasty experience for us. It was also a nasty experience for some of the ministers who were new in government, for them to sit down day and night to work. I saw them some of them literarily lost weight because they were sleeping less and eating less, working on every kobo to be spent.

He said that because Nigeria became a mono-economy based on oil, the past governments relied on oil and forgot about solid minerals, agriculture, and other resources.

The President added: “We recently just found out that we are poor because we don’t have anything to fall back to. This is the condition we found ourselves and this change mantra had to go through hell up till yesterday.

“And for you to talk to whoever came to visit us throughout that year I wonder how each of your diaries would be, because people were expecting this change mantra in their own way.

“How do you define change? Luckily our party identified three major items, security, economy and corruption.

“One of the man I pitied is Lai Mohammed everyday he is on TV explaining our performance or lack of it.

He also wondered how some Nigerians betrayed the trust of the people by diverting $2.1 billion meant for fighting insurgency.

He said: “People were trusted and the most recent one which we haven’t recovered from is the $2.1billion dollars, is was given by the government then to the military to but hardware to fight the insurgency which had taken over part of the country and they just sat just the way you are sitting now and shared the money into their own account.

“They didn’t even bother. So we are still trying to get the cooperation of the international community and so on and we have to do it with a lot of respect to the judiciary.

“We can’t go out and talk too much we have to allow the judiciary to do their work. We gave them the facts, the name, country, bank account. If you talk too much technicalities will come in, them we will realize less than what we want to realize.

“So please when next you want to interrogate out visitors try and do some research so that when they are coming next time, they will do research themselves.” He stated