Jonathan launches campaign in Lagos, says MEND leader hired to assassinate me

As the celebration got underway in Eagle Square on October 1, with Mr. Jonathan in attendance a bomb exploded outside the venue. Several people were killed and many others were injured in the explosion which was immediately claimed by the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), led by Okah.Okah is currently serving a […]

As the celebration got underway in Eagle Square on October 1, with Mr. Jonathan in attendance a bomb exploded outside the venue.
 Several people were killed and many others were injured in the explosion which was immediately claimed by the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), led by Okah.
Okah is currently serving a jail term in South Africa for gun running and other crimes. However, the President subsequently absolved MEND of responsibility for the attacks in an address at a colloquium in Abuja by the ECOWAS Parliament.
“What happened yesterday was a terrorist act and MEND was just used as a straw; MEND is not a terrorist group,” the President said two days after the incident.
He added, “It is erroneous to think that my people who have been agitating for good living will deliberately blow up the opportunity they have now.”
But more than four years later, Jonathan now says that event was an assassination attempt carried out by Okah at the instance of some disgruntled people who he did not name.
The President disclosed this while speaking at the flag-off of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential campaign in Lagos.
“I saw a headline in one of the newspapers, saying MEND dumps Jonathan, did you see it?” Jonathan asked the audience. He continued: “The leader of MEND is Henry Okah, Okah is in prison in South Africa, not even in Nigeria, where they could have said I influenced it. He is in prison because he wanted to assassinate me by bombing Eagle Square. The intelligence service got the information and I was driven into the Eagle Square in a hurry. “Now he is endorsing some people, is that the kind of country you want? Do you want Nigeria to go backward or forward?”
The claim came two days after MEND issued a statement castigating him for serial failure and backing his main challenger in the February 14 election, Gen Muhammadu Buhari.
He said that it was wrong for people to say that MEND has dumped him when the leader of the group was hired to assassinate him and is still in jail.
“How can somebody hired to assassinate me be for me?” he asked rhetorically, adding that intelligence reports in South Africa and Nigeria have revealed that Okah was hired to assassinate him.
The president called on Nigerians to vote for the future of the country by voting for the PDP.
He said he has been tackling corruption and that soon, the relevant agencies would brief Nigerians on their accomplishment, adding that his government has been able to end corruption in agriculture through the development of an ICT platform known as E-Wallet.
The President said that he would not fight corruption by witch-hunting people and bundling them into jail on grounds of suspicion, adding that he believes in the rule of law.
He said he means well for the prosperity of Nigerians and that he has no enemy to fight, adding that a vote for the PDP will liberate Nigerians.