Former Nigerian President, Goodluck Jonathan has advised the incumbent President, Muhammadu Buhari to swallow his pride and learn from the success stories of ex-PDP Presidents rather than bash his new book.
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Goodluck Jonathan said he was disappointed in the Presidency as well as the Borno State Governor, Kashim Shettima for attacking his personality based on certain parts of his book, ‘My Transition Hours’ they did not agree with.
The former President had accused Shettima of negligence in the events leading to the abduction of Chibok schoolgirls in 2014 and also claimed that his administration fought corruption better than the present administration in the book.
Shettima had referred to the book as an elementary book of fiction while the Presidency had accused Jonathan of playing the ostrich.
Issuing a statement through his Media Adviser, Ikechukwu Eze, Goodluck Jonathan said the reactions that have trailed the book was a comprehensive plan to discredit his work.
According to Jonathan, the reaction of the senior special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, towed a “revisionist path” when he claimed that Jonathan’s anti-corruption records could not be substantiated.
He said rather than stand proud and aloof, the present administration should understudy the success nuggets of previous administrations.
“Nigeria’s best ranking in TI’s corruption perception index still remains her placing in 2014, under President Jonathan, as the 136th out of all the countries ranked.
This is far better than the last position recorded under the present government where Nigeria was ranked as number 148, a decline that took the nation 12 places backward.
Rather than continue to raise a false banner of piety which apparently is no longer working, this administration would have served itself and the country better by understudying the success nuggets of its predecessors.
Only then will they learn that Jonathan was able to do this through effective implementation of sound economic policies and institutional anti-corruption measures established by his administration.” Excerpts from the statement read.
Eze said there was no doubt that Jonathan provided focused leadership on the economic front, through institutional and sectoral reforms which impacted positively on the fundamentals for growth.
“Again, I urge them to bear in mind that no economy thrives where corruption is either rife or being concealed. So, those who rile and snap at Jonathan because he presented his scorecard in a book should provide their own numbers and statistics to counter his claim.
In trying to do so, Nigerians would want to know what they have done about the high profile corruption allegations involving such individuals as Abdurahman Maina, Babachir Lawal, as well as sundry allegations of multi-billion-dollar sleaze involving such institutions as the NNPC, National Emergency Management Agency under this administration.” The statement continued.
Describing Shettima’s reaction to the book, Jonathan said it was a noisy and feeble defence of his inadequacies, saying it only resulted in showcasing “a jaded ritual of chest-thumbing, rather than offer plausible explanations for the ignoble roles he played in worsening the Boko Haram tragedy in his home state. “
He said further that the governor had in the past four years, been living in denial and towing an evasive path he has beaten for himself.
“What the governor may not know is that he is only walking the path of a villain. Once demand is made on him to explain why he deliberately ignored both the directive of both the Ministry of Education and the West African Examinations Council for governors to keep candidates in the affected locations out of harm’s way by relocating them to safer areas for their exams, he goes asking for the release of the report of Gen. Ibrahim Sabo-led facts-finding committee set up by President Jonathan.
He probably thinks that challenging former President Goodluck Jonathan to publish the findings of the committee which, in any case, he is privy to is a smart way of hiding his lapses.
If it was bad enough that ignoring the directive meant deliberately exposing the girls and other school children to danger, it was utterly reprehensible that when the girls eventually got kidnapped the governor refused to cooperate with the Federal Government during the search and rescue efforts.
He is on record to have boasted that he did not contact the President until 19 days after the abduction had taken place. One other of such clearly senseless behaviour was his ill-advised roller coaster trip to America and Europe soon after the girls were abducted; a development that pushed a bemused foreign journalist to ask him what he was doing abroad at a time his home was burning.”