Goodluck Jonathan Reels Out His Achievements In Office During Speech At Oxford

Below is a comprehensive list of achievements that former president, Goodluck Jonathan stated during his speech at Oxford University earlier today.

1. It is my pleasure and a great honour to be in the hallowed chambers of the Oxford University, one of the world’s most prestigious universities, not just to speak, but to exchange ideas and answer questions from you, some of the world’s most brilliant youths and future leaders.

2. It is instructive to note that since 1823, the Oxford Union has consistently presented this platform for scholarly and social congregation of the student population, the interchange of ideas, propagation of views in the enhancement of knowledge, and for the overall good of mankind.

3. This is highly commendable.

4. This discussion is topical for our global search for development and security. The issue of youth entrepreneurship in Africa is very critical, as Africa is the only continent in which we will witness a population boom in our lifetime.

5. Studies reveal the symbiotic relationship between youth unemployment and youth restiveness. Accordingly, most violent crises in Africa have been traced to a lack of education among its teeming youth population.

6. Genuine search for development and sustainable peace must therefore begin with youth empowerment and entrepreneurship.

7. When I was Governor of Bayelsa State and later the President of Nigeria, I asked myself some critical questions;
· Why are some nations rich and some poor?
· Why do individuals that grow up in similar circumstances end up differently, with some as successes and others as failures?
· Is the wealth of nations a result of geography, weather, culture, destiny, etc.?
· What could a leader do to effectively lift a people out of the depths of poverty, and enable them to achieve prosperity?

8. After much soul searching, my conviction in regards to these questions is this : wealth is a creation of the human mind properly prepared by education.

9. It is my firm belief that any Nation that does not spend its wealth and resources to developing the capacity of its youth will eventually be forced to devote its resources to fight insecurity amongst those same youths.

10. As a leader, you can decide through your policies to educate the youths, or face the consequences of failing to do so. The problem all African leaders have is how to manage the youth bulge. Do we consider this a ticking time bomb or an opportunity?

11. To me there are two key areas we must invest our resources if we are to convert this perceived time bomb to the opportunity I believe it is. The first is requisite education and capacity building. This should be followed by enabling youth entrepreneurship. Allow me to share with you a brief account of the implementation of my vision to empower the youth.

12. Within a year of my stewardship as the Governor of Bayelsa State, I gave Education a top priority.

13. I provided infrastructure in primary, secondary and tertiary institutions and gave undergraduate students financial assistance in the form of Bursary awards.

14. I started building two special post primary schools for gifted and talented children. The relevance of the gifted children school is obvious. For the talented children, the idea is to develop their natural talents in addition to sound education so that at graduation they can make a living from their God given talents if they choose to do so.

15. While construction work was on-going in the special schools, we initiated a program to encourage the best brains of the State. We selected through competitive entrance examinations the most brilliant pupils in our primary schools and sent them to the best secondary schools in the country.

16. The idea was for the State Government to take care of the best brains from the post primary through the tertiary level of their educational career and ensure that they attend the best institutions anywhere in the world. It was designed for a minimum of 100 pupils to be selected for this program annually. I left the State after one year and five months to contest election as the Vice President, and therefore could not see the idea through.
17. Upon assumption of office as President of Nigeria, I launched a similar program called the Presidential Special Scholarship Scheme for Innovation and Development. [PRESSID] This scheme nurtured a select cadre of professionals, to serve as facilitators for accelerated, sustainable, economic and technological advancement.

18. Each year, through competitive examinations, we selected between 100-to-120 first class graduates and sent them to the top universities in the world to study for higher degrees. These students were drawn from various STEM disciplines. Let me mention here that Oxford University was an integral part of this program and indeed, a favourite for most of our applicants.

19. The essence of the program was to get a crop of youth over a period of time that will advance our course technologically. When I launched the program, I did mention that we were training young people that will take Nigeria to the moon.
20. In addition to this, my administration also gave a series of educational incentives to university students across the country.

21. We established twelve conventional Universities and a specialized Maritime University. To assist the disadvantaged children in Northern Nigeria, we built 165 special schools known as “Almajiri School” that integrated Islamic culture into Western education.

22. The foundational theme of my Administration was ‘The Transformation Agenda’. It was conceived to engage the latent potential in the entire nation, and to stimulate and enable higher productivity. And this was also the foundation of our youth development drive.

23. The Transformation Agenda sought to address the problems of youth job creation, with emphasis not just in getting our young citizens employed, but in assisting them in acquiring the right skills, and providing the requisite support. This was to enable them set up and run their own businesses; thereby becoming employers of labour themselves.

24. In Nigeria and most African countries, there are well-educated young people. The problem is how to create opportunities for them. My Administration came up with various programs to encourage young entrepreneurs. The most popular is the Youth Enterprise with Innovation in Nigeria “YouWIN”.

25. It was a unique intervention launched in 2012, which targeted youth with unique business proposals in startups and expansion of existing enterprises. YouWin is structured as a competitive cyclic initiative which invites and reviews Business Plans submitted by Youth. Young people who wanted to be entrepreneurs were asked to submit their business proposals. The best business plans were chosen based on relevance, profitability, demand and practicability. The winners were trained and given grants.

26. YouWIN was multi-sector- cutting across light manufacturing, food processing, and the service sector.

27. The motivation for this program is for young people to go into SMEs, create jobs for other young people with the expectation that some would grow to large scale businesses. In addition to YouWin, under our broad based Agricultural Transformation Agenda, we developed the Youth Employment in Agriculture Program [YEAP] – and like many of our other youth programs, we incorporated the youth themselves in its design.

28. This took a complete value chain approach from farming to processing and marketing. Just like in the YouWIN initiative, my Administration gave young farmers grants and training. The young people who were involved were called “Nagropreneurs”.
29. We also launched The Graduate Internship Scheme (GIS). The objective of this program was to provide temporary work experience for fresh graduates, to enhance their capacity to attract permanent jobs. Eligible graduates are posted to corporations and companies in the private and public sectors. They received practical training and mentorship for a one-year period, within which remuneration is paid by the government. This enabled the young graduates to acquire relevant experience.

30. We also increased the allowances due to Youth Corp members by more than 100% in 2011. This was in line with our policy of youth empowerment and development.

31. To ensure that the Nigerian youth benefit massively in the ICT revolution, we created a special Ministry of Communication Technology. We wanted the Nigerian Youth to be self-employed and exploit the advantages of ICT. The Ministry, among other things, improved broadband penetration, set up ICT incubation centres in Lagos and Calabar.

32. The efforts of the Young software engineers at the Lagos Co-Creation Hub (CC Hub) became so successful that it did not only give birth to many thriving start-ups, but their activities also attracted the attention of Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg who chose it as his first stop during his first ever visit to Africa.

33. One sector we deliberately encouraged to stimulate job growth for Nigerian Youth was the Nigerian entertainment industry. We identified Nollywood as a sector that can employ many young people. We provided a grant of $200 million and for the first time, Nollywood became a major contributor to our GDP. In 2014, Nollywood contributed 1.4% to our GDP.

34. The sporting industry was also not left out. We encouraged our young people in that sector. I was to launch a Fund to encourage sporting activities in the Country but I had to bow out by 29th of May 2015. Nigeria has a crop of talented youth but the nation has not properly keyed into the global sports industry. The Fund would have been a catalyst to promoting the Nigerian sports industry by promoting training, welfare of athletes and manufacturing of sporting equipment among other things.

35. Distinguished audience let me conclude my speech by urging contemporary African leaders to see youth entrepreneurship as a collective project transcending national boundaries.

36. I believe in the Nigerian youth and indeed African Youths. My conviction is not only an emotional one, but one grounded in my experience with youths from all over the continent. You will agree that foremost in the minds of many youth, is a desire to develop their dreams and potentials. Placing them closer to the driving wheel, does a lot for their confidence.

37. Despite incredible challenges, Nigerian youths are achieving great things and placing Nigeria positively in the world map. Nigerian youths are an inspiration to their leaders.

38. I once said that I was not elected President of Nigeria to spread poverty, I was elected to generate and spread wealth. My belief in this regard is that getting a job or being a worker cannot completely cure the disease of poverty. It is only your own business that can provide such security and give you the financial freedom you need to prosper.

39. That was why my Administration introduced these initiatives and policies, to enable Nigeria’s youths take their own destinies in their hands.

40. You can appreciate that there was a lot of emphasis on education during my time at the helm of both my State and my Nation. This is because the richest people today are those who develop ideas and commercialize them. Viable ideas can only come from educated minds, and money pursues ideas. My three flagship programmes ie the gifted and talented children schools in Bayelsa State, the Presidential Special Scholarship Scheme for Innovation and Development and the ICT Incubation Centers (Co-Creation Hub) were geared towards developing that calibre of youth.

41. We may not have been perfect, but we did our best, and our best yielded an era of unprecedented economic growth for Nigeria.

42. A growth that proved the truism that a Nation’s wealth is not underneath the ground but between the ears of her people.

43. Under my watch, Nigeria was projected by CNN Money to be the third fastest growing economy in the world for the year 2015 and rated as the largest economy in Africa and the 23rd in the world by the World Bank and the IMF, with a GDP above half a Trillion US dollars.

44. These in a nutshell are some of the ways we were able to promote youth enterprise; a topic that I know is of utmost interest to many of you here.

Oprah Winfrey Interviews Pastor Who Predicted Her Achievements Decades Ago

Oprah Winfrey has interviewed many spiritual thought leaders in her career, but there is one in particular who had a profound impact on the media mogul long before she ever had any kind of platform or public persona.

That man is Wintley Phipps, a gospel singer and pastor that Oprah met back when she was a young reporter. Since the two first crossed paths decades ago, they have become longtime friends. Phipps recently joined Oprah for an interview on “SuperSoul Sunday,” and they reminisced about their fateful meeting so many years ago — and hearing them retell it, it’s no wonder that was a moment Oprah has never forgotten.

At the time of their first meeting, Phipps had just finished a gospel performance at the Baltimore Civic Center, which Oprah had attended. She quietly approached Phipps as soon as he stepped off the stage.

“I remember coming down off the platform, and there was a tap on my shoulder,” Phipps says to Oprah. “You said, ‘Excuse me, sir. I just heard you sing and I feel like I can talk to you. Do you have time to talk to me?'”

Phipps agreed, and made arrangements for Oprah to visit the home he shared with his wife, Linda, for a spiritual conversation. They spoke and prayed together, and then, the pastor told Oprah that he had a divine message for her.

“I said, ‘Before you go, God has impressed me to tell you: He’s going to bless you and give you an opportunity to speak to millions of people,'” Phipps says. “And you said, ‘Do you really think God would do that for me?'”

Yet, even with this prediction, there was one aspect of Oprah’s success that Phipps says he didn’t see coming.

“You know, when God impressed me to tell you that you’ll be speaking to millions of people,” he says to Oprah, “I didn’t think it was going to be every day!”

Credit: HuffPostOWN

Anifowoshe Titilope Legal Eagle: The Programmed Psyche Of The Nigerian Youths

The advent of social media has unarguably eased the world of so many impediments. In fact the human race is gradually adopting this man-made culture which is becoming more superior than the age-old culture of our forefathers. According to statistics if Facebook was a country it will be the most populated  (beating china the world’s most populated country) of 3.16 billion people, it should however be noted that this statistics does not include the population of China, as Facebook has been blocked from the nation since 2009.

Today 43% of the world population are 25 years old or younger, this young  group in according to Wikipedia are 33,652,424 in population (70% of the nation’s population). Research shows that these group are the most prominent users of social media, ranging from Facebook to Twitter, to Skype, to badoo, to instagram, wahtsapp, snapchat etc. Relationships are maintained, business deals are sealed, political participation is enhanced, we get first hand information about new trends and happenings etc. It is unarguable that this 21st century culture has made and marred our lives, most  of us worship it, we met our lovers courtesy this new culture, we interact with our affiliates through this culture, we get the latest music updates through these platform, we learn tips  on how to look good, we get updated about our favourite celebrities, we flirt and commit so many atrocities through this culture of ours.We detest giving out polymer notes as alms,but we don’t mind expending our last kobo to renew our data subscriptions all for this new culture that we adore  and respect even more than our creator.

One of the lessons I learnt from my industrious father is that you don’t invest your money into a cause that won’t yield anything to you. What’s the essence of life if not for happiness, fulfillment,upliftment and service to God and Humanity? It’s very sardonic that this 21st  century culture of ours has been malignant to Nigerian youths.

From my knowledge of history I know that youths were the agents of political change, the power house of the industrial world, the brain of the computer world, I learnt that Martin Luther King at 29 refused to accept things the way they are through the audacity of his dreams and revolutionary ideas. Standing Boldly on the floor of the parliamentary house with matchless eloquence of a seasoned orator, Anthony Enahoro at 30 stood in the midst of elder statesmen and fellow Patriots, armed with the courage that only the young can muster , looked the colonial government in their faces and moved the motion for the independence of Nigeria for the first time in 1953. He shut his eyes at the inducement and threats of the colonial masters and fought for the freedom of his countrymen. Before 28, Chinua Achebe, an acclaimed father of African literature had written and published Things Fall Apart- a book which according to Wikipedia has been translated into more than 50 foreign languages. At 13, Bill Gates wrote his first computer program and by the age of 19, founded Microsoft with Paul Allen (21) in 1975. They both created a golden opportunity for themselves and for others generating $77.85 billion annual revenue with the staff strength of 100,932 at the close of 2013. At age 12, Mark Zuckerberg wrote his first computer program, by 20 he founded Facebook with some of his colleagues in the University dormitory in 2004.

Majority of Nigerian Youths believe that they are not qualified to work on their dreams until they have gotten a degree certificate and concluded their National Youth Service, they waste their pristine age pursuing a degree certificate ; which today is a mere social status, they kill their creativity and channel their energy solely to making 5.0CGPA. At a stage where energy and ingenuity surge is at the highest level, we wait for WAEC, JAMB, BSC and NYSC as if success depends on these social time wasters. At a youthful age when aspirations and entrepreneurial spirits are strong and blossoming our educational system is busy tailoring the minds of our brilliant youths for non-existent jobs in government, banks, chevron, Etisalat, NNPC, Law Chambers etc.

We are too enthralled by the fun of the social media that we have refused to avert our minds to the the various ways we can add values to our lives through the media. If Galileo could discover the principle of pendulum at 18 without the help of Wikipedia, if Thomas Jefferson could draft the most potent and consequential document which secured the independence of America without the assistance of Google, if Albert Einstein could change the course of modern physics without the aid of downloaded pdf files and online materials, what exactly is the reason why we (21st century youths) can’t  break the bounds and make billowing and landmark achievements? With the social media and the Internet at our finger tips, with the press at our Beck and call, with the ardor of our federal government to make things right, what is your excuse?

It’s not just about the ideas, it’s about tapping the unlimited resources at your reach to carve a niche for oneself. Million dollar ideas are a dime a dozen, the determination to see your idea through is what is priceless. Decide today to follow through on your idea, the Internet is available for you to research on the million and one lucrative businesses and innovations that are yet to be explored. You need not make beads before you are empowered, you need not learn make-up because that’s what every girl does, be unique, be different, start up something new. A lot of people left Facebook for Twitter because it’s a different idea, if every female youth learns tailoring, who will manufacture the clothes tomorrow? If every male youth learns printing jobs who will fix our cars in the future? If bead-making is the vogue today, what happens if wearing beads becomes old fashion?

Fellow Nigerian Youths; now is our time to enhance the media for our own good!

*Legal Eagle is the immediate past Vice president of Unilorin SUG and CEO of Eagles Foundation

 Views expressed are solely that of author and does not represent views of www.omojuwa.com nor its associates

PDP List Achievements As Party Celebrates 17 Years

Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Nigeria’s oldest political party, yesterday, marked 17 years of its existence with a low-key event at its Wadata Plaza, Abuja National Secretariat.

Briefing Journalists in Abuja, PDP National Publicity Secretary, Chief Olisa Metuh, who catalogued the achievements of the party in its 17 years of existence, said it lost some of its founding and leading members because they could not withstand what he termed, stiff competition within the party and some mistakes the party made.

Metuh who tagged his speech, ”PDP At 17..Still The Only True National Party”, said that in spite of the exit of some of its founders and leaders, the party is still in line with the vision and mission of its founding fathers.

He listed the achievements of the PDP-led administrations in economy, transportation, agriculture, healthcare, rule of law, entrenching democracy among others and wondered why the eletorate rejected the party at the polls in 2015.

Read More: vanguardngr

Buhari Has Done Very Well – Onyema

Chairman of Air Peace Airline, Chief Allen Onyema has rated President Muhammadu Buhari high after evaluating his one month in office.

“One month of President Buhari, I will say is highly successful,” Onyema told Vanguard in an interview.

“The president should not be stampeded into taking hasty actions that we may regret at the end. He needs time to plan. He met things that are not so pleasant on his table. He has to take time to undo some of those wrongs.

“In one month, you don’t expect anybody to perform miracles.”

Highlighting the criteria he used in scoring the president high, Onyema said Buhari’s non-interference in the National Assembly election was commendable, especially for someone  who everybody did not know to have democratic credentials.

“Again, one thing you must give to Buhari is his aura. The aura of an incorruptible mantra is already affecting the entire country and people are scared to do the wrong things. With that alone, I score him 100 percent,” the Air Peace boss said.

Although insurgent attacks have increased since President Buhari was sworn in, Onyema says the president has made remarkable changes.

“He just took over one month ago. He needs to study the security reports that the past government collected in the last four years. You cannot really judge him now, he has to plan. It is when he hits the road running that you can actually judge him. You cannot really expect him to throw the Nigeria military into the fray like that. He has done the first thing by visiting leaders of the neighbouring countries to solicit their support.

“Being a former military leader, I am sure he wants to move against Boko Haram in a very bad way. So he would not want a situation where when he moves against them they would find succour in the neighbouring countries.

“I believe he will deal with the issue but they should not forget those affected by the insurgency because if you are attacking insurgency and not doing anything about those who suffer collateral damage as a result of the insurgency you will be creating more Boko Haram at the end of the day,” Onyema said.

Buhari Has Surpassed Jonathan’s Achievements Within Three Weeks- APC

The All Progressives Congress, APC, has responded to a recent statement credited to the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, where the opposition party accused it of making mockery of governance with premature celebration of imaginary achievements. The governing party insisted that President Muhammadu Buhari has already surpassed President Goodluck Jonathan’s achievements in the area of fighting insecurity.

National Publicity Secretary of the APC, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, who made this known in a statement issued yesterday, maintained that President Buhari had done in three weeks what Jonathan could not do in six years.

While noting that the Peoples Democratic Party-led Federal Government could not get world powers to help Nigeria in fighting terrorism, he assured that the Buhari administration would wipe out terrorism within a short time.

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Jonathan’s Failures, Achievements In 5 Years- Report

After sweeping to power with a vast majority of the votes during the 2011 presidential election, it didn’t take long before the Goodluck Jonathan presidency began to unravel.

Mr. Jonathan, who had endeared himself to majority of ordinary Nigerians with his “I had no shoes” speech, promised a break from the old ways of doing things. His campaign slogan which was tagged “A Breath of Fresh Air” promised a break from the old and mostly retrogressive way the country had been governed in the past.

Like all the country’s past leaders before him, Mr. Jonathan kicked of his presidency with a string of promises.

But this was not just another member of the country’s navel-gazing elite promising to be the messiah of the long-suffering common man, this was a person they saw as one of them; someone who had experienced their pains and hardship promising to alleviate those pains. Nothing could be more reassuring.

In his inaugural speech, he promised a transformative government. He promised to grow the economy, create jobs and to provide overall happiness to Nigerians.

“The urgent task of my administration is to provide a suitable environment, for productive activities to flourish,” the president said.

He promised to improve electricity and medical care for all, provide efficient and affordable public transportation and first class education for every Nigerian.

But it soon became clear that these were merely soundbites as the Jonathan administration couldn’t deliver of most of its promises.

Power

On power generation, Mr. Jonathan said four years was enough to solve the endemic power generation in the country. On 31 January, 2011, speaking to diplomats of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, UNECA, and the African Union, AU, in Addis-Ababa Mr Jonathan said:

“If I’m voted into power, within the next four years, the issue of power will become a thing of the past. Four years is enough for anyone in power to make a significant improvement and if I can’t improve on power within this period, it then means I cannot do anything.”

After several interventions including the privatisation of the power sector and several billion naira spent on power reform, power generation has dropped to less than 2,000 megawatts. One of the country’s biggest distribution companies, Ikeja Electricity Distribution PLC, announced last week that it was allocated zero megawatt.

Only five megawatts is available to the country’s capital, Abuja, and just five out the country’s 23 power plants were functional as of Monday. In January 2011 when Mr Jonathan promised to “make a significant improvement” in power supply, the country was generating over 3,000 megawatts. That is more than 1,000 megawatt lesser power.

Fuel, Subsidy and Refineries

Nigeria was literally brought to a standstill this week after oil importers and tanker drivers embarked on a strike over disagreement with the Federal Government over subsidy payment. Schools, hospitals, major airline, banks were shut down due to the unavailability of fuel. PMS was selling as high as N500 per litre from the N87 official pump price. Fuel subsidy has constituted a black hole in the country’s finances.

An attempt by the government to remove fuel subsidy – its first most controversial policy, a decision Mr. Jonathan said will eradicate fraud – left Nigerians paying more for fuel. The government increased fuel pump price, and petrol for instances, climbed from N65 to N97 per litre.

Between 2010 and 2014, the government spent more than N6.354 trillion on subsidising imported fuel. On May 13, 2010, soon after he was sworn in as substantive president after the death of Mr Yar’Adua, Mr. Jonathan awarded the contract for the construction of three Greenfield refineries at the cost of $23 billion.

The main contractors China State Construction Engineering Corporation (CSCEC) is meant to pick up 80 per cent of bill while the Nigerian National petroleum Corporation finance 20 per cent of the project. The refineries were to be established in Lagos, Bayelsa and Kogu State and were expected to have a combined refining capacity of over 400,000 barrels per day by 2016 to meet the shortfall in domestic demand. If the project had been successfully executed, it would have saved the country more than $10 billion spent annually on subsidy payment.

Last October a member of the House of Representative, Abass Tajudeen, observed that one year to its estimated completion date, no tangible work has been done on the project so far.

“We are amazed that despite a favourable recommendation by the task force for the Lagos refinery, there is no evidence of plan to construct a refinery at the Lekki site by year 2015,” he said.

Second Niger Bridge

During the 2011 presidential campaign, Mr Jonathan at a town hall meeting in Onitsha promised to build the Second Niger Bridge to ease economic activities in the South East.

“When the first bridge was built, it was during the presidency of Nnamdi Azikiwe; the second Niger Bridge will be built under the presidency of Azikiwe Jonathan.

“I will go on exile on the completion of my term in office if I didn’t build the bridge by 2015,” he said.

Though skeletal work has commenced on the site of the bridge, the project is still a mirage. In January this year while campaigning in the Anambra State, Mr Jonathan extended the completion date of the bridge by 14 months.

However, Nigerians were quick to observe that all they saw during the president’s visit to the site, were sand dunes and a prototype picture of the bridge.

Unemployment and Corruption

Under President Jonathan, Nigeria’s unemployment rate increased as the government did little to provide jobs despite claiming huge numbers.

In 2010 when he assumed office, unemployment rate was at 23.9 per cent, but by 2014 the figure steadied at 24 per cent, according to figures from the National Bureau of Statistics. The agency recently announced a new protocol of calculating unemployment, with claims the figure stands at less than 7 per cent.

No doubt, one of Jonathan’s administration was its approach to corruption. The president started out by granting pardon to his former benefactor and ex-Bayelsa State Governor, Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, who was convicted for money laundering and theft of state funds. If the Jonathan administration had any pretence of fighting corruption it quickly went out of the window after that. Mr Jonathan also failed to rein in aides and minsters accused of corruption.

For several months, he kept his Aviation Minister, Stella Oduah, in his cabinet despite public outcry over her scandalous spending of over N255 million to purchase two BMW bulletproof cars. When the minister finally left office, the government made the point of insisting the decision was voluntary to allow Mrs. Oduah pursue other political interests.

Yet, the same government acted differently and swiftly when the former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Lamido Sanusi, in 2013 claimed that $20 billion of oil money was unaccounted for by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC. Mr Jonathan promptly fired the CBN governor after accusing him of financial recklessness.

Boko Haram

If anything tore the Jonathan government apart, none did as the Boko Haram insurgency. The government struggled for years for a response while the bloodthirsty group ran amok, killing, maiming and displacing Nigerians in mostly northern states in its bid to form an Islamic caliphate within Nigeria.

Critics say the president didn’t act decisively until eleventh hour when it became clear that his failure to put down the group was going to affect his chances at the polls. Despite international outcry and calls, especially by the Bring Back Our Girls campaigners, for the over 200 school girls kidnapped by the extremist group from Chibok, to be rescued, his government failed in rescuing the girls.

Achievements

Though his administration fell largely short of expectations, Mr. Jonathan performed impressively in some areas. Though still far from being at par with services around the world, President Jonathan resuscitated the comatose railway sector.

Previously abandoned routes especially between the Southern Nigeria and the North were revived and made pliable though at a less than desirable speed and comfort. His administration also started to build new railways lines like the one linking Kaduna to Abuja.

Road construction and rehabilitation should rank among the top five of his achievements in office. During his administration more than 50 road project were either completed or at various stages of completion.

The government rebuilt the notoriously defective Benin-Ore road, and worked a significant part of the Abuja-Lokoja road, amongst many other roads.

Electoral reform was perhaps the best of President Jonathan’s delivered promises. Though elections in the country remains far from ideal, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) did not enjoy the kind of independence it enjoyed under the Jonathan administration in the entire 16 years of democratic rule of the Fourth Republic.
The independence enjoyed by INEC allowed it to introduce innovative electoral fraud busting technology such as the card reader and bio-metric identification of voters.

The president also approved notable legislations his predecessors failed to sign.

With the signing of his Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) early in his administration, Mr. Jonathan indicated he was ready to run a transparent government. However, he did not do enough to make government agencies and parastatal buy into the spirit of the FOIA as they repeatedly turned down FOIA requests except in few cases.

President Jonathan provided vital support to sections of the business and the entertainment community, including his grant for the Nollywood. Access to such facilities remained problematic though.

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Even Olusegun Adeniyi’s ‘Tower of Babel’ Cannot Water Down Jonathan’s Historical Impact – Reuben Abati

There has been an organized and consistent attempt by a certain section of the political class and the Nigerian commentariat to water down the historical impact of President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan’s decision to concede victory to President-elect Muhammadu Buhari ahead of the final tally in the 2015 Presidential election. Those who have engaged in this enterprise are unkind, if not callous, insincere, if not cruel.

Their tactics, which range from the dubious to the mischievous, have included a desperate attempt to push the story that President Jonathan would not be the first African leader to concede victory in an election, or that he is certainly not the first Nigerian President to do so. The second claim has been effectively dismissed with historical facts, and as for the former, in a continent where sit-tightism remains a threat to democratic consolidation, and elections in many places are seen as mere rituals for keeping the monarch in power till death do them part, no informed student of the subject will deny the truth that President Jonathan’s conduct is definitely an act of statesmanship and heroism, and that President Jonathan deserves all the recognition, the accolades, applause and vastly elevated moral stature that has come with that singular act.

By his very unusual and highly symbolic act of graceful concession, President Jonathan snatched glorious victory from the jaws of seeming defeat. He outsmarted his traducers and became overnight, a hero of global proponents of true democracy in Africa. While many of his opponents seemed obsessed with power at all costs and by all means possible, by calling General Buhari to concede victory, President Jonathan fully lived up to his often stated conviction that the country is more important than individual ambitions and that leadership should be more about sacrifice than the pursuit of self-interest.

Some had threatened that he would end up like Cote d’Ivoire’s Laurent Gbagbo. He proved to be a much better student of history. They promised that if his electoral defeat which they had dictated as an inevitability did not come to pass, they will instigate chaos and confusion, form a parallel government and make Nigeria ungovernable, hang it all on his head and send him to the International Criminal Court. In the end, he short-circuited their conspiracy, and showed that he belongs to a global hall of honour, not infamy.

Ahead of the 2015 Presidential election, many Nigerians had scampered to their ancestral, ethnic safety zones in fear, while the better circumstanced sought safety in self-imposed temporary exile, to watch the homeland from a distance until things settled. One man’s act of courage and patriotism changed all that. He defied the same stereotypes which curiously are being reinforced in some African countries, and created a special moment for Nigeria and Africa. This is perhaps the more enduring location of President Jonathan’s legacy: his vote for peace and national stability.

We need to keep repeating this, especially as those who feel cheated and hurt by President Jonathan’s winning in losing, seem determined before our very eyes, to revise a less than six-week old narrative. With their first two claims dismissed as vacuous and even irrelevant to the point, they are now recruiting pens and mouths for a new leg of their narrative. The most telling in this regard has been Olusegun Adeniyi’s “Inside the PDP Tower of Babel” (THISDAY, May 7, back page). Adeniyi’s indicated purpose is to review the politics of the PDP in the context of the ruling party’s defeat in the 2015 General elections, but for the most part, he seeks to portray President Jonathan as duplicitous and hypocritical.

Adeniyi’s claims and insinuations are informed by a meeting he claimed took place at the new Banquet Hall of the Presidential Villa, “on Tuesday, 30th March 2015,”- he probably meant Tuesday, 31st March 2015- that historic day when President Jonathan raised the moral level of Nigerian politics. Adeniyi was not at the meeting, so we can safely assume that his entire rendition is based on hearsay. If he insists that he heard his tale on “good authority”, then that would be suspicious because Olusegun Adeniyi, who has been in the corridors of power at significant moments, and has written two books on the subject – ‘The Last 100 Days of Abacha’ (2005) and ‘Power, Politics and Death’ (2011), ought to know that Nigerian politics is a seething vortex of intrigues, angle-shooting, complex conspiracies and crass opportunism.

Adeniyi may have unwittingly allowed himself to be misled, indeed, he may need to ask his sources playing the role of “Aso Villa spies” for their recorder, and listen more carefully. As it is, his reportage is pure fabrication intended to unjustly discredit the President and promote other vested interests within the polity.

I begin with the third paragraph of his piece: “The atmosphere at the meeting was sombre…”, he writes. How can Adeniyi be so sure of the texture of an atmosphere he never experienced? He adds: “…without much preamble, President Jonathan announced: “Gentlemen…” Sorry, Segun. It is not President Jonathan’s style to open any meeting at all with the phrase: “Gentlemen…” He is more likely to observe the protocol list.

What then follows is a long quote, meant to be President Jonathan’s charge to the meeting: “…about an hour ago, I called General Buhari to concede and to congratulate him. But I did that not because the PDP lost the election but rather to calm the nation, as many people advised me to do so. Even when I conceded to allow the nation move forward, the information at my disposal is that the election has been massively rigged and INEC is complicit. While I have done my bit as a statesman, I believe the party should put out a strong statement to reject the result and that the PDP will challenge it in court. I think the National Publicity Secretary of the party should do that.”

These words which Adeniyi attributes to President Jonathan are not his, nor do they reflect his style or thought process.  He never uttered those words.

In the seventh paragraph, Adeniyi goes ahead to offer what seems to be a verbatim report of conversations between Godswill Akpabio, Liyel Imoke and Adamu Muazu in the privacy of the latter’s house! Does he have spies in Muazu’s house? If not, then definitely, one of the three gentlemen must be his shameless kiss and tell source? Will he be willing to tell us who this is? No, he won’t because he can’t. A few paragraphs later, Adeniyi further writes somewhat gleefully that “the President may be meeting his match in Muazu”, and states that “it tells a compelling story of its own that Muazu is the 6th PDP Chairman under Jonathan, all within a period of five years.”

Adeniyi’s bias is undisguised; his construction of a duel is curious, but he would still need to tell the accurate story of the circumstances that led to the exit of the former Chairmen of the Peoples Democratic Party in the past five years. Contrary to his insinuations, they were not removed by President Jonathan. Okwesilieze Nwodo was removed by a court of law due to local Enugu state politics. Dr Haliru Bello who served as Acting Chairman after him was later appointed Minister of Defence in 2011. Alhaji Abubakar Baraje succeeded Bello also in acting capacity to complete Nwodo’s aborted tenure. The story of the exit of Vincent Ogbulafor and Bamanga Tukur equally has nothing to do with the President.

I can go through the rest of Adeniyi’s story-telling to point out other inconsistencies and give-aways. Reading between the lines, it should not be too difficult in the light of recent altercations among PDP chieftains about who did what and who received and disbursed what money during the election campaigns to know the kind of conspiracies at work. In making a story out of the melodrama, however, Olusegun Adeniyi should have resisted taking a trip of his own to Babel.

The meeting that he refers to took place at least five hours after President Jonathan had congratulated General Buhari, “not one hour ago,” as he claims. By then, words of admiration and commendation for his gallantry had flooded the airwaves. The President did not need to be persuaded to take that decision. He had always made it clear that his ambition is not worth the blood of any Nigerian. As he himself has pointed out, he took the decision in the interest of national unity, peace and stability and to prevent any form of post-election violence.

The President could see through the traps that had been laid for him; at that moment he was already fully aware of the extent of the network of sabotage and conspiracies, internal and external, contrived and inflicted, that wrong-footed the PDP during the elections. Many party leaders started rushing to the Villa after hearing what the President had done. They were caught unawares. He had absolutely no reason to ask the party to reject the results of the Presidential election. And he never did. He had made up his mind to let it go. By the morning of April 1, he was already packing his things out of the Presidential Villa, satisfied that he had done the right thing by preventing a much predicted ethnic, religious and political violence.

Olusegun Adeniyi therefore got it all wrong. But not done with his trip to Babel, he is also threatening to write a book to be titled: ‘Against the Run of Play: How an Incumbent President was Defeated in Nigeria’. He certainly owes us an obligation to declare early enough if that is intended to be a work of fiction and hearsay. The People’s Democratic Party which lost power suddenly at the centre, after 16 years in the saddle, is obviously undergoing a post-defeat trauma. Discrediting President Jonathan, with dubious story-telling, should not be part of that crisis.

  • Dr Abati is President Jonathan’s Spokesman and Special Adviser, Media and Publicity. 

NOTE BY OLUSEGUN ADENIYI:

I have argued in several forums that the concession by President Goodluck Jonathan should not be diminished and, in all my writings, I have tried to project that position. But facts are facts. In the meeting after he conceded (okay, I got the timing and date mixed-up), the president indeed asked the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to contest the result. And those disputing my narration because they are invested in sustaining a mystique also know that for a fact. But that for me does not take away from the fact that President Jonathan saved the nation from a pending calamity by conceding. I am sure that those at the meeting (and there were many) who are keeping silent now will begin to talk after May 29.

However, what is important is that I bear no ill-feeling towards the president for whom I have tremendous respect and he can always count on my support long after many of his fair-weather supporters would have deserted him. As for my coming book, Reuben needs not worry, especially since I always share the content of such efforts with him in advance as a confidant. He may recall, for instance, that he, on his own volition, decided to write the Foreword to the Abacha book after reading the manuscript while I also sent him the first draft of the Yar’Adua book seven months before I eventually published it. Finally, Reuben knows that when he becomes another “yesterday’s man” like the rest of us by May 30, he will always be my friend.

PDP Not Doing Enough To Market Jonathan’s Achievements – Campaign Organization

The Peoples Democratic Party Presidential Campaign Organsiation on Thursday lamented that the ruling party was not marketing President Goodluck Jonathan’s achievements enough to Nigerians ahead of the March 28 presidential election.

The Deputy-Director General of the campaign organisation, Prof. Tunde Adeniran, who made the observation, also warned that if the PDP did not retrace its step and showcase Jonathan’s achievements, others will use it against him.

He spoke in Abuja at a national training session for PDP delegates, designed to train-the-trainers and is expected to train 600,000 polling units canvassers ahead of the election.

The programme tagged “Operation Deliver Your Ward”, saw three participants drawn from each state of the federation and the FCT, Abuja.

Adeniran said, “If we continue to show this man has not done anything, others will capitalize on it. The party is not showing enough in this regard.

“The president’s achievement is undersold and in some cases not sold at all, in some places they ask, so Jonathan has done so”.

Adeniran, a former Education Minister, gave the PDP knocks for not allowing the people to know what Jonathan has done.

He, therefore, pleaded with the participants, who he said were being trained with the view to imparting the knowledge acquired in the states, not to dump the materials given to them on their shelves.