President Goodluck Jonathan has described the blame game embarked upon by past leaders of Nigeria about its under-development as a cheap escape route, saying the truth of the matter is that his generation has failed the country.
Jonathan who spoke at the Peoples Democratic Party’s presidential campaign flag-off held at Tafawa Balewa Square in Lagos, challenged the ex-rulers of the country to explain what they did with the defence budgets when they were power.
The president, whose address dwelt mainly on reactions to allegations against his government, said he was only concerned about younger Nigerians who, he said, were being fed with lies peddled by the ex-leaders he did not mention their names.
“I want to address people who are voting for the first time this year, those of you who attained 18 this year. I don’t want to address old people like me because we are spent. I am going to address political gatherings in 37 places and I am going to dwell on three major things; whatever I say, when you get back home, call your parents, aunties, uncles that are at least 60 years old and confirm what you heard…
“2015 elections is about the young people; either you vote for the young Nigerians to be relevant in Nigeria political history or you vote for you to be irrelevant. I want to dwell on three things because those who say they want to take over power from the PDP have been telling a lot of lies; they have hired people from all over the world to tell all sorts of lies on the social media, painting all kinds of colour and giving me all kinds of bait they cannot defend.
“I will address insecurity, corruption and insinuations of weak government. On voter cards, I have directed INEC that all Nigerians – not 99.9 per cent – must vote. Before 2011, no Nigerian complained that he had no voter card, but we came and insisted that every Nigerian must express themselves at the polls; since then voter cards became relevant.
The president fired an apparent salvo at the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) which was two days ago accused by the DSS of trying to fake the voter cards.
Jonathan continued: “Already, some people are cloning cards so that your voter cards will not be relevant; is that the kind of people you want to take over government? They want to take us back to the old days where nobody sees voter cards but results were announced. They want to take us back to the old days where ballot papers will be in South Africa and results will be announced in Nigeria.”
On insecurity, the president accused past leaders, including his direct opponent Gen Muhammadu Buhari, of weakening the country’s armed forces by starving them of the arms despite funds provided for that.
“They talked about insecurity – that they will fight insecurity; are our armed forces weak? If we have a problem, what is the cause? It’s equipment. They don’t have the platform. Somebody will wake up and tell young people of 23-year-old that he wants to fight insecurity; ask him, when he was the head of government, did he buy one rifle for the Nigerian soldier?
“They refused to equip the military; they didn’t buy anything, no helicopter, nothing. Ask them what they did with their defence budget the whole time that they were in office; they didn’t equip. No country equips armed forces overnight because their equipment is quite expensive. Armed forces are built over the years; the capacity is built over a period of time. They refused to build the capacity. They instigated crisis and now they are coming to tell us they will solve the problem. Ask them and they will answer.”
On the charge that his government was soft on corruption, Jonathan said that more people have been quizzed over the offence of corruption than he is given credit.
He said: “I addressed the anti-corruption agencies yesterday (Wednesday) and I told them that people are deceiving young Nigerians, but they must tell Nigerians what the government is doing. We have arrested more people within this period. We have done more convictions within this period, but every day they tell us lies. If they had succeeded in fighting corruption, it won’t be with us today.”
