FULL TRANSCRIPT OF PRESIDENT GOODLUCK JONATHAN’S REMARKS AT
THE FLAG-OFF OF THE PDP 2015 CAMPAIGN IN LAGOS ON THURSDAY,
JANUARY 8, 2015
Your Excellency, the chairman of our great party, Alhaji
Adamu Muazu, senior members of our party here on this great occasion, we have
spent so much time here so I will not bore you with protocols.
Today, I am going to address only a segment of the Nigerian
population. I am going to address the people who are voting for the first time,
those of you who will attain 18 years this year.
That means I am addressing the young people. I do not want to
address old people like me, because we are spent already and I will crave your
indulgence Nigerian youths, those of you who are here, and those of you
watching us at home, listen to what I am saying.
I am going to address political gatherings in 37 cities and I
am going to dwell on three key things. I am focusing on the young people.
Whatever I say, when you go back, call your aunts or call
your uncles, your father or your mother, or your cousin, that is at least 60
years old and confirm and ask them what you heard that the Presidential
candidate of PDP mentioned in any of the rallies because 2015 elections is
about the young people: either you vote and continue to be relevant in
Nigeria’s political history or you vote for you to be irrelevant.
And I will repeat it, those of you who are voting for the
first time, your decision to vote could mean you vote for a Nigerian youth to
be important, to be relevant in this country or be a Nigerian person to be
treated as a nonsense person and I believe all of you want to be relevant.
Of course you have seen…we have just introduced our
governorship candidates and you see how many of them that is of your age
bracket. Which other party will give that kind of opportunity?
I am going to dwell on three things because those who say
they want to take over power from PDP have been telling a lot of lies. They
have hired people from all over the world and those of you in the social media
carry all forms of lies, painting all kinds of colour and giving me all kinds
of face that I cannot defend.
If you listen to us in the 37 places we will address these
issues, you will now know where to cast your votes. I will address you in all
the places on three issues.
The first is the issue of insecurity. I am also going to
address whether this administration is fighting or encouraging corruption. I am
going to address the issue of weak government and unfocused government that has
no plans. Yours is to listen and compare with everything that has been done
before in this country and take a decision.
I will not keep you here for too long because we still have
the opportunity… I am going to raise just very few issues today and tomorrow I
will continue in Enugu and then on and on and on.
First let me tell you about the voter’s card. First when we
came in here we saw some placards, some of you complaining that we are yet to
get a permanent voters card. Only yesterday, I directed that every Nigerian (of
voting age) must vote. INEC must make sure and government will not allow a
situation where some (eligible) Nigerians will not vote; we will not allow it.
All Nigerians must vote and I mean it.
I told you that I am addressing those of you who are voting
for the first time. Those of you in the age bracket of 20 to 24, if you go
back, ask your uncles, before 2011 no Nigerian complained that he had no voters
card. People voted themselves into office. We came and said every Nigeria vote
must count and since then, the voter’s card has become relevant.
This is the party that is giving political strength to all
Nigerians. Already you have been told from intelligence reports that some people
are already cloning cards so that your voter’s card will no longer be relevant.
Is that the kind of people you want to take over government? (Crowd shouts
NO…!)
They want to take us to the old days when nobody saw voter’s
cards but results were announced. They want to take us to the old days when
ballot papers would be in South Africa and results would be announced. Are you
going back to the old days? (Crowd shouts NO…!)
Nigeria must move forward, Nigeria is for the youths. Nigeria
is not for old people like us. The young generation must redefine this country.
We must take this country to where we want it to be. Nobody can push us
backwards. The past is past. They have led us backward and backward.
In fact when we were young, we were told that at Independence,
Nigeria, Brazil, Malaysia, Indonesia and even India were all at the same level.
That was what we were told when I was in the secondary school and the
university. Now all those countries have left us behind and now some people
want to take us backward. Do you want to go backwards? (Crowd shouts NO…!) Nigerian
youths do you want to go backwards… (Crowd shouts NO…!)
Young Nigerians were doing things fantastically well, they
were acting films and these very people were snubbing them, they were playing
music and these very people were abusing them. But we are encouraging them and
the world has accepted them. Do you want to move forward? (Crowd shouts YES…!) Do
you want to go backward? (Crowd shouts NO…!)
I told you I was going to address things and I will be very
brief. They talk about insecurity. That they will fight insecurity. And you
will ask are our armed forces weak? Are the Nigerians in the Armed Forces weak?
If we have problems what is the cause—equipment. And somebody who wakes up and
tells young people of 23 years old that he wants to fight insecurity, ask him
when he was the head of government did he buy one rifle for a Nigerian soldier.
(Crowd shouts NO!…)
These people did not buy anything for the Nigerian soldiers.
They refused to equip them. No attack helicopter, nothing. Ask them what they
did with the defence budget for the whole time they were in office. No
country equips armed forces overnight. What they use is quite expensive and
they are built over the years. Even if you spend 10 billion dollars today, you
cannot equip the army, navy and air force.
The capacity is built overtime. They refused to build the
capacity. They instigated crisis and now they are telling us they will fight
insurgency. Ask them and they will answer. I will elaborate more as we progress
to other places.
The next is that they say government is corrupt; or we are
not fighting corruption. Only yesterday, I addressed the anti-corruption
agencies. I said look people are deceiving young Nigerians. You must tell
Nigerians what you are doing. We have arrested more people within this period.
Gotten more convictions within this period but everyday they tell us lies.
At this point, let me apologize to some Nigerian civil
servants who did not receive their salaries in December early enough and I will
tell you what happened. I apologize to those families that suffered because we
believe that for you to fight corruption; you must take measures, establish and
strengthen institutions. You just don’t wake up, enter the street, arrest one
person and lock up and show on television and say that you are fighting
corruption.
If they had succeeded in fighting corruption, corruption
would not have been with us here today. If they had set up structures and
especially in today’s modern science using ICT to manage resources, we would
not have been talking about corruption today. What happened in December was
that IPPIS, software for processing salaries, -- sometimes people steal through
salaries- and some federal government agencies including some ministries tried
to divert funds to pay some allowances. The system is scientific, it is not a
human being, and as long as money meant for salaries is about to be diverted to
other things, it shuts down. Those departments of government were shut down, this
is the only way that you can prevent corruption. (Crowd claps …)
I served in Bayelsa as deputy governor and governor for eight
years; I also served as Vice President and President for another four years at
the centre, for all this period, the fertilizer area is where states and
federal governments spend billions of naira but less than 10 per cent of
fertilizers go to the farmers. The rest is stolen and sent out of the country.
Even the 10 per cent sometimes is adulterated. We came and cleaned up the sector
and today there is no corruption in the fertilizer industry again.
What did we do? We assembled some young Nigerians that are IT
gurus and we developed the e-wallet system and through that the farmers now get
their fertilizers directly and nobody is cheating the government again. Is that
not the way to stop corruption? (Crowd shouts YES! …)
If somebody tells you that the best way to fight corruption
is to arrest your uncle or father and show him on television, well, you won’t
stop corruption, you will even encourage corruption. I used to tell people and
I will also address press conferences so that people can ask me direct
questions. Armed robbery is still with us, despite the fact that we are
shooting (death penalty) armed robbers. Is that stopping armed robbery? (Crowd
shouts NO…!)
So arresting people and demonstrating on television will not
fight corruption, we must set up institutions, strengthen them to prevent
people from even touching the money and that is what we are working on and we
are succeeding.
Some people say they are finding corruption… some of you
know, I am not addressing people of 20 years and below but people from 30 years
and so on… Nigerians go to fuel stations and sleep overnight to buy fuel or tip
those who sell fuel to buy fuel. They hoard fuel and they benefit from the
hoarding. Who are those who benefitted from hoarding fuel? Since we came on
board, have you suffered? Do you need to bribe someone before you get
fuel?
When the crisis of insecurity came up, we had nothing. So to
get things very quickly, we used some vendors to make procurement. But now what
we are doing is government to government. Now any new procurement we are doing
whether for the air force, navy or army it’s government to government, so there
is nothing like corruption anymore. Even if we have some issues, maybe… is that
not the way to fight corruption?
You must prevent people from touching money, you don’t give
them the opportunity or test them with money and this is what government is
doing and we are succeeding in a number of areas in our procurement processes.
The relevant agencies will address Nigerians for you to appreciate what we are
doing.
They say the government is weak, they say we are un-focused;
we have no plan.
They say we are weak because there were some people who took
our fathers, our mothers and our uncles while they were abroad put them in a
crate and flew them to Nigeria but they were intercepted by superior powers.
That blocked Nigerians from even going to Britain at a time and the
relationship between Nigeria and Britain… the whole world isolated Nigeria.
They said that is the way to fight corruption. So immediately
I suspect your uncle, I can just crate him and throw him into Kirikiri. Is that
the way to stop corruption? (Crowd shouts NO!)
If somebody tells you that he will not follow due process… I
came in with Yar’Adua and he advocated due process and I stand by due process.
Any country that does not abide by the rule of law is a jungle.
Do you want Nigeria to be a jungle society? (Crowd shouts
NO!) Immediately I suspect you that you have done something wrong I just
ask the police or army to arrest you and throw you into jail. Is that the
country you want? (Crowd shouts NO!)
They say to be strong is to jail people indiscriminately for
300 years. Is that where you want to go? (Crowd shouts NO!)
A country is like an industry. It must be managed properly by
people who have brain and great ideas upstairs.
Let me just give you some highlights: they say we are not
focused; we are not planning. But our economy has become the biggest in Africa;
it was not the biggest in Africa before. Without planning, can your economy
become the biggest in Africa? (Crowd shouts NO!)
They say we are not planning, we are not focused but we have
cleaned up the corruption in fertilizer distribution in the country. The farm
inputs are getting to the farmers and our import bills, the money we use in
buying things from outside is coming down. Can you get that without planning? (Crowd
shouts NO!)
You are no longer queuing up and leaving your cars in fuel
stations. Can you do that without planning? (Crowd shouts NO!)
I believe that some few years back some young people have not
seen trains except when you travel abroad and you have never boarded a train.
Now our trains are moving. Can you do that without planning? (Crowd shouts NO!)
In the power sector, we are in Lagos, Egbin power sector got
burnt in 2005 and remained so until now when we are fixing it. We have been
able to finish the privatization of the power sector. This is an interface
period but you already know that the generation capacity is almost double. Can
you do that without planning? (Crowd shouts NO!)
This government feels that Nigerians are very dynamic people,
very creative, very industrious, very talented in music, arts and business.
Many of them do not have money and you know we are almost 200 million in
Nigeria and we cannot reach everybody the same day. We came up with the concept
of YOUWIN to give grants not loans to young Nigerians that have ideas. If you
interview them, some of them are already manufacturing and in the next four to
five years, we will be exporting things from this country. And they say we have
no plans for the youths? They should come and tell us what plans they have for
the youths.
I believe that young Nigerians, not people who are spent and
finished. not people of my age, we are gone… that is why I said I am addressing
people from the ages 18- 23 those who are voting for the first time, we believe
that you people will take us to the moon. My generation has failed we couldn’t
take Nigeria to the moon. Look at what India is doing. Look at what countries
we were at par with at independence are doing and I said for us to get to the
moon, that’s a special area; you need to expose your best brains.
I came up with a special scholarship that you must first of
all make a First Class in the university. We have scholarship for everybody but
you must first of all make First Class from your university and then we test
the best brains and send them to the best 25 universities in the world. Can
someone who has no plans for the future of this country do that? (Crowd shouts
NO!.)
Can somebody who does not think about the Nigerian youth do
that? (Crowd shouts NO!)
Do you want to go back to those days when they had no plans
for us? (Crowd shouts NO!)
When I came on board as President, I noticed that though in
the country and on paper, there is this programme or policy of government that
every state must get a Federal government owned university. Out of the 36
states we have, 12 had no federal universities and people were deceiving
Nigerians that they were doing something.
I said we must establish these 12 universities in the
remaining 12 states, start as small universities and grow and we have done that
successfully and they are growing gradually.
We did not stop there. We looked at the school drop-outs in
some parts of the country and they were quite high. We came up with the
Almajiri educational programme and we thank the Governors from many of the
states where we have those set of students. We have programmes for Almajiri
students and we have the programme for out-of-school children. Can somebody who
has no plan for the country think about that kind of programme? (Crowd
shouts NO!).
You will ask some of those people who are deceiving you now
and who hired some people from outside the country to go on social media and
tell all kinds of lies, that when they were in power did they build any nursery
school for anybody? (Crowd shouts NO!) Ask them, ask them, I say go and
ask them.
If they did not build nursery schools for anybody, what did
they use our money for? They built prisons or universities for you?
I will build universities for you, I will build secondary
schools for you, I will build primary schools for you.
They say we have no plans for this country but we established
the Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF)—out of the money that comes into this country
we reserve a little so you just don’t squander it.
This is a government that introduced for the first time what
we call the SWF and I want to thank the Governors from the states who keyed
into the SWF idea. In addition to the SWF, you know that there are some stolen
monies, which from time to time government gets back. They have been getting
these monies back but we do not know how they are spending it.
The ones that have come in within this period, we have not
even started spending it but first of all we agree on how to spend it. Because
we have security challenges and this money is primarily for security and they
used security channels to take it, 50 per cent of it will be used for security,
25 per cent of it for development and 25 per cent of it will be used for future
generations. This is the decision we have taken even before we start
spending the money. Can somebody who has no plan for the future of the country
do that thing? (Crowd shouts NO!) They should come and tell you what they
used our monies for.
We believe that so many young Nigerians, some young workers
find it very difficult to own a house of their own. We introduced the Mortgage
Refinancing Company. It is just coming up, estates are being built and we are
working with the Labour unions. As we pursue that programme in the next five
years, most Nigerian workers either working in private sector or in government
can own houses. They have no plans for you; they are coming to tell you false
stories. We have said you do not need to have so much money to own a house. Do
you want to go back to the old days? (Crowd shouts NO!)
We have plans for employment generation. We know one of the
greatest challenges for most governments including Nigeria is to get jobs for
our youths but we are not sleeping. So far we have been able to create a number
of jobs… I have set up two bodies headed by the Vice President made up of
people in government and the private sector. We call them Presidential Job
Creation Board and Micro, Small and Medium Scale Enterprises Council, working
very hard to ensure that every year two million jobs are created. Can somebody
who has no plans do that? (Crowd shouts NO!)
Of course we have been told that I have other opportunities.
I have many other things to say but people are getting tired … (Crowd shouts
NO!, go ahead) … we’d have the opportunity to talk and talk and talk.
Some groups of people have said that you have to vote for
your liberation or imprisonment. Some groups of people came, and I read it in
the papers, when they see people in government maybe governors, ministers,
commissioners and so on … they will say we will draw a line, we are not probing
the past because they want to deceive them to get their support.
So they will draw a line and start fighting corruption after
they cross the bridge. Only two days ago, somebody stood in Port Harcourt and
said he was going to catch people in the streets and throw them into
Kirikiri.
The same mouth says something from the right, and from the
left, making contradicting statements. Can you trust those people? (Crowd
shouts NO!) Are they not deceiving you? (Crowd shouts YES!)
They want power by all means and all what they want to use
power for is to lock up and imprison their enemies. I have no enemy to fight.
My interest is your interest. My interest is the Nigerian interest and for the
future generations and young Nigerians to develop. Not to fight enemies. We
must stop corruption. I will not stop corruption by catching people, putting
them in trailers and dumping them off to be killed. You can’t stop corruption
that way. Someone wakes up and he feels he can jail all his enemies and he
thinks that is how to fight corruption? I think we have advanced beyond that
point.
Somebody wakes up and says ``O, Nigerian women I am going to
give you position.’’ And you ask him when you were a Head of Government, you
had a cabinet, I have the list of the cabinet members, there was no one single
woman. Not even one in the cabinet.
So Nigerian women, you cast your votes and go back to the
kitchen and die there or you cast your votes to liberate yourself.
The Nigerian women must decide where to cast their
votes: you vote and go back to the kitchen and die in the kitchen or you
cast your votes to liberate yourself. We are ready to liberate all Nigerian
women.
Let me say one more thing and conclude. I read a headline in
one paper yesterday: MEND DUMPS JONATHAN… did you read it? (Crowd shouts Yes!)
I am from the Niger Delta. The leader of MEND is one Okah. He
is in South African prison. Why is he there? South Africa is not Nigeria where
people will say Oh, President (Jonathan) manipulated it. Okah is in the prison
because 1st October 2010 when we were to celebrate our independence, our
golden year of independence, Okah was procured by some Nigerians to assassinate
me. Okah bombed Abuja, but the attempt was to assassinate me and South Africa
intelligence system caught him in the plan to assassinate me. He is now in jail
in South Africa and they say MEND dumps Jonathan.
Okah that wanted to assassinate Jonathan, will he support
Jonathan? (Crowd shouts NO!) I am told that Okah is supporting some
people… I am told that Okah who is in a South African prison for killing
Nigerians is endorsing some people. Is that the country you want to live in? (Crowd
shouts NO!) Count me out.
Let me conclude by thanking all Nigerians, especially
Lagosians. Let me sincerely on behalf of my party apologise to you because we
are having this rally today so the whole of Lagos is at a standstill. We beg
you, we have to do it and we know you love us, will support us and we promise
to make sure that… this is the very first government that has supported the
industrial sector very well. Ask your brothers and sisters in the private
sector, if they are sincere they will say that we have come up with policies
that have encouraged commerce and industry.
Government alone cannot employ people. The private sector
must grow to create jobs for the people. Bear with us because the PDP
government will continue to encourage the private sector to create jobs for
Nigerians.
Finally, let me tell all of you especially those of you, who
want to go to the National Assembly that we just had a national conference. The
document from that conference, because of the controversy we have in the
present National Assembly, you know how chaotic the present Assembly is, we
know that if you bring that document to the Assembly they will dump it.
So we want to present it to the next Assembly. So those
people you are sending, if you mean well for this country, you must vote people
who can go to the National Assembly, discuss and adopt that document that our
leaders have agreed so that this country can move forward.
I stand today in the city of Lagos, in the south west on
behalf of the leader of our party, Alhaji Muazu, the Vice President and all the
leaders and promise that if you vote the PDP en masse to the National Assembly
and to the Presidency, we will adopt that document so that this country will
move forward.
That document is to liberate you, we did not influence it,
our fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters that are credible came up with it.
Ask them, we did not influence it. I did not ask them to dot
any `I’ or cross any `T’ because I have no personal interest. My interest is
the Nigerian interest.
It is either we vote to be prisoners as we were- and I will
tell you maybe some of you do not know, in 1983, I don’t know for the young
people, some of you who are writing all sort of things on the social media. In
1983/84, what they called discipline as a post graduate student instead of
reading my book, the whole night I queued up to buy two tins of milk. And they
say that is discipline.
So we should make you queue up the whole night as students to
buy two tins of milk? Is that the discipline you want? (Crowd shouts NO!)
You must vote for your liberation, you must vote for your
development, you must vote to take Nigeria to the moon. You cannot vote to take
Nigeria backward.
Leave us who are half dead to bury our dead. You must
vote for the progress of this country, you must vote for the Nigerian youth,
you must vote for the Nigerian women. PDP!… POWER!
Thank you all. (ENDS).
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