Jonathan: 2015 elections won’t disintegrate Nigeria

•Says elders breaching Nigeria’s peace •No individual owns Nigeria •Why PDP lost Ondo, Edo, Anambra, Osun guber polls–President President Goodluck Jonathan has assured Nigerians and the international community that the 2015 general elections will not disintegrate the country. Jonathan spoke in Abuja today at the ‎interfaith conference convened by the Sultan of Sokoto Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad […]

•Says elders breaching Nigeria’s peace
•No individual owns Nigeria
•Why PDP lost Ondo, Edo, Anambra, Osun guber polls–President

President Goodluck Jonathan has assured Nigerians and the international community that the 2015 general elections will not disintegrate the country.

Jonathan spoke in Abuja today at the ‎interfaith conference convened by the Sultan of Sokoto Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar III and John Cardinal Onaiyekan‎. The conference was themed “The Imperative of Interfaith Understanding and Cooperation for Responsible Politics”.

Jonathan, who noted that there was a reason for Nigerians to be afraid of the country’s future in lieu of the current challenges, raised the alarm that politicians, especially senior citizens, were already making reckless and irresponsible statements capable of stoking tention and inciting Nigerians to take laws into their hands and distablise the country.

“I don’t run away from the fact that we’ve challenges just like any other country. I don’t deny the fact that there is a reason for people to express fears about our future. Some politicians have been making reckless and irresponsible statement that are capable of stoking tention and inciting people to take laws into their hands and distablise the country. But we’ve to understand that these statements are not born out of the genuine reason of mood and temperament of Nigerians. Rather, these enemies of peace are only trying to spoil the mood and create tempetous temperature, but they’ll fail.

“Unfortunately, these statements are coming from very senior people. Our elders are making the whole country to boil. From my interactions with so many young Nigerians, just few days back, I addressed a group of young professionals, the young generation want to live together. They want a better country where they’ll have the infrastructure–power, good health services, good educational facilities, roads, etc– They’re not interested in breaking the nation. But those of us who are old mainly from my age and above will continue to breach peace in this country. We’re not helping our children at all. 

“I once again assure Nigerians and international community that 2015 ‎elections will come and go and Nigeria will stand stronger”, the president said.

He flayed those he called doom’s day sayers for predicting calamities in the country ahead of the 2015 general elections.

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Jonathan said the current challenges must not be allowed to inhibit the nation’s progress, adding that “Despite the fact that we’ve survived the civil war and continued to evolve as one nation with one destiny, we’ve among ourselves those who continue to define us and put it that we cannot live together.

“As the 2015 elections draw near, the doom’s day sayers are out predicting how Nigeria is going to catch fire next year.‎ In the opinion of some so-called experts, our ethnic and religious differences are bound to boil over. They portray us doomed to fail. But I can say categorically that‎ Nigeria won’t disintegrate, we’ll not fail. We’ll surely get over our challenges and become even a stronger nation. If you spend a lot of time on the internet, the social media, you’ll be tempted to think along the same line. In a country of over 170 million people, the opinion of very few is now being elevated above that of over 100 million Nigerians.

“It’s heartwarming ‎that there are diverse religions of people in this conference today. This is for our good. It’s a clear demonstration of deep religious tolerance and understanding that has permeated minds of Nigerians to embrace one another having realised the need for mutural tolerance and understanding‎. The interfaith initiative, as I understand, is conceived to be a unifier and an avenue for all and sundry to engage with one another constructively, to understand one another, to respect another and to care for one another”.

He assured that his government would do everything possible to make the 2015 general elections free and fair, saying: “The Nigerians I know and interact with every day are only asking for one thing in the election; transparent, free and fair elections and I have promised them. They want to vote and want their vote to count. They don’t want to be molested, they don’t want ballot boxes to be hijacked by criminals. If they’re convinced that the process is free, fair and credible, they’ve no reason to be angry. Nobody can fight against one man, one vote, one woman, one vote and one youth, one vote. 

“And the government will make sure that Nigerians are not killed during and after elections.‎ I’m surprised that some political parties are agitating that government should withdraw security during and after elections. What surprises me most is that even some labour leaders are agitating that government should not secure people during elections. And I wonder how short‎ human memories are. 

“We just finished 2011 elections and we’re talking about three years ago or quite close to four years ago and we know what happened in Bauchi where about 10 youth corpers were slaughtered in that election. We know what happened in Kano where property worth millions of naira were destroyed. Some of the people haven’t got back their houses. We know what happened in Akwa Ibom where some criminals even had to severe the genitals of some men in the name of politics, demons who want to hold political office. In that kind of situation, how would a person who calls himself a labour leader come out publicly to say government should not secure people. I don’t agree with them. My promise of free and fair elections is clear”. 

Speaking further, the president said his party, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), lost the recent gubernatorial elections in Ondo, Edo, Anambra and Osun States because he was not interested in manipulating the elections.

“All the governorship elections that have been conducted so far, you’d agree with me that they’ve been free and fair. I’m from the PDP, the ruling party, but I don’t use that strength to make sure that PDP must win always. PDP has lost election in Edo State, Anambra State, we lost election in Ondo State and of course, only two days back, we’ve lost election in Osun State.

“‎If I was interested in manipulating elections, my party would not be losing all these governorship elections. All what we want is credible elections.

“But we’ve said that this country must change. ‎the kind of elections‎ we had in the 60’s that led to the crisis in the West which threatened the sovereignty of this country cannot come up again. The kind of elections we had during the Second Republic that some people won elections as governors and ran away from the states that they claimed elected them cannot come up again. Nigerians must vote and our vote must count”, he said.

Jonathan reminded the politicians that their ambition in not worth the blood of any Nigerian, saying the country is not owned by any individual.

According to the president, responsible politics is about rendering service to the people.

He said: “I always tell politicians that none our own ambition is worth the blood of any one Nigerian. ‎If anybody wants to be a president, governor, a senator or anything, know that your ambition is not worth the blood of any Nigerian. How many of us can line up our children and kill them just because we want to be president? Can we use our children for sacrifice because we want to be governors? Why do we want other people’s children to die? Do we, politicians, think we’re created differently by the Almighty God? I think we are just privileged to hold the offices we are holding and we must know that, we must make sure that this incessant killings must stop.

“Responsible politics is the politics of service. Anything short of these attributes makes politics bad and destructive. We must continue to preach this message for people. Politics is all about serving people and if people don’t want you to serve, go and stay in your house. Our states are not our private estates, this country is not owned by any individual. If you’re called to serve, you serve; if it’s not your turn, you leave; whenever it’s your time, people will say come and serve‎ at all levels.”

Jonathan commended the organisers for their foresight in convening such a conference on a topical issue which, according to him, seems to encourage political understanding among religious adherents.

“This conference offers good opportunity for us to show to the doubts that we don’t hate each other. It’s a veritable platform for us to show ‎our ruggedness as a people. Those who think we’re so different and have conclude we’ve nothing in common won’t like this initiative to endorse this conference. But they should know that our strength is in our diversity. God created a diversied world for a purpose. God is a God of diversity. What will the world look like if all of us were of the same height, same colour, same gender, same nationality or ethnicity etc? I don’t think the world would’ve been an interesting world to live in. Rather than divide us in our diversity and write us off, we’ll rather celebrate ourselves for our diversity.

“The Nigerian nation, I’ll say again, is a nation in evolution. The circumstances of our amalgamation in 1914 have been interpreted in different ways to suggest that ‎we would’ve been better without it. We can go on debating for as long as we want, but I’m convinced beyond reasonable doubt that our nation is being celebrated as a great nation by other African leaders and Nigeria being the hope of the black race is because of our diversity. If we were just minor enclaves of people either from the south, west, east or north, none of us would’ve been relevant to the world today. We’re relevant because of the amalgamation and our diversity.

“We’re not relevant because we produce oil. We produce very little oil and the oil here is too insignificant. People must know that we’re relevant and appreciated all over the world because of our diversity and the amalgamation. We’ve seen countries of the same religion yet at war because of different interpretations of the same scriptures. We’ve seen all Christian and all Muslim nations fighting internal and bitter war based on some minor nominations or sect. We’ve seen countries with one single culrual heritage go to war because of minor reason. We’re a people created by God and we enjoy the creation. Our country was also made possible by Him, the Almighty and I’m confident that working together, we can make our country even a better place for ourselves and our children.

“There is no government you’ll form in Nigeria today that won’t reflect our diversity. In fact, our constitution makes it very clear that for you to form your cabinet, every state must have one minister and you can’t go contrary to that. Our National Assembly reflects almost every ethnic and language group in this country. So, where then is the problem. The evidence before us suggests we’re integrating and evolving to a nation.

“For those who choose to focus on the negative, they can only see war and damnation. They cannot ‎see the fact that many southerners have made the north their homes and many northerners have made the south their homes. We know that immediately the end of the civil war, immediately hostilities stopped, we saw people from the south ‎move to Kano, Sokoto and so on and so forth. There is no separation”, the president said.