WHY MY VOTE IS FOR PRESIDENT GOODLUCK JONATHAN
Despite the fact that former President Olusegun Obasanjo has on several occasions Presented Gen. Muhammed Buhari, the APC presidential candidate as Nigerias' next President, millions of teeming Nigerians have vowed to make it impossible for these military renegades and turncoats to thwart the popular will of the wonderful and peace loving people of Nigeria.
Another high profile Nigerian who has authoritatively spoken about Nigeria's next president is the Sultan of Sokoto Alhaji Sa'ad Abubakar III who at the inauguration of the Holy Mother and Clinic in Sokoto told his audience that God has already chosen Nigeria's next president as at Monday September 29 th 2014. The sultan did not however mention who this new president would be but his statement and body language have betrayed even his unspoken words.
Former President Obasanjo has vowed to unseat President Goodluck Jonathan by any means possible except through the ballot box which is globally accepted as the only democratic way of changing governments even in communist countries.
These covert innuendoes from Gen. Obasanjo and other Nigerian leaders is the tip of a violent volcano that could erupt if well-meaning Nigerians like Alhaji Sheu Shagari, General Yakubu Gowon etc do not boldly speak out to nip the evil and clandestine intentions of the All Progressive Congress “new helms man” in the bud. The reality on ground is that the APC has either concluded plans with the Independent Nigerian (sorry National) Electoral Commission (INEC) to double-rig the March 28 th elections or overthrow a re-elected president Jonathan on his inauguration day.
But the house-house campaign to re-elect President Goodluck Jonathan will build a massive Pro-Jonathan force that will overwhelm the demonic intentions of Nigeria's self – appointed holier-than-thou LANDLORDS like Obasanjo and his APC cohorts.
Obasanjo's “man Friday” is the well-known draconian former Military Ruler, Gen Muhammed Buhari who was generously tagged an “animal in human skin” by Nigeria's evergreen musician, Fela Anikulapo Kuti.
Gen. Muhammadu Buhari has become an encoring decimal in all presidential elections since the return to civilian politics in 1999. Gen. Buhari missed out only in 1999 because the north unanimously chose Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo as Nigeria's undisputed president as a result of his support for Alhaji Shehu Shagaris victory against Chief Obafemi Awolowo who would have by now placed Nigeria as the most corruption – free and most powerful nations in the world.
And since then Gen. Buhari has became a serial loser in all of Nigeria's Presidential elections of 2003, 2007, 2011 and that of 2015 which he will lose with a land slide defeat.
Gen. Buhari has chosen “Anti-corruption and security” as the beach head of his presidential campaign and some very gullible Nigerians believe the listless and feeble septuagenarian has the mental and physical capacity to execute this onerous and energy sapping task. Gen Buhari will be 73 years old later in 2015 and will be in his 80s in his second term. For someone who is so weak and devastated mentally and physically, it will be a tall order to expect Gen. Buhari to last the distance especially for someone who is already showing signs of dementia and Alzheimer disease.
Let us meet Gen. Buhari in his strongholds of anti-corruption and security. Gen Buhari's unsubstantiated anti-corruption mantle is a worn-out cliche, a vague and dubious incongruity, which has been shredded into the dustbin of history.
Let us start ab initio from 1978 when Gen. Muhammadu Buhari was Federal Commissioner for Petroleum Resources and he also doubled as chairman of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). NNPC under the chairmanship of Gen. Buhari secretly transferred S2.8BN to a British bank without official records and of course with President Olusegun Obasanjo's connivance and knowledge. President Shehu Shagari traced this money to midland bank in London through undercover investigations by the then senate President Dr. Olusola Saraki's panel of Enquiry. Up till this moment, Gen. Buhari has not been able to explain to his doubting listeners on how a whooping S2.8BN vanished under his watch, Gen. Buhari had to overthrow the Government of Sheu Shagari to cover up this monumental fraud. But Gen. Buhari was not able to perform final burial rites for the NNPC missing funds as he too was toppled in a military coup, thereby leaving hurriedly with legs protruding from the coffins for eternity and history to judge.
Just like Gen. Buhari's NNPC missing funds, history repeated itself again in 1994 when the same Gen. Buhari became the chairman of the petroleum trust fund (PTF). Even when the PTF Board was replete with very responsible and high caliber Nigerians, Gen Muhammadu Buhari slipped in his son-in-law, Alhaji Ahmed Salihijo the owner of Afro-Pet Consortium secretly as PTF's sole consultant and contractor. Gen Buhari signed cheques amounting to N181BN to Alhaji Salihijo's company and after series of scandals involving fake drugs and uncertified constructions and billions of naira in wasteful and unsubstantiated expenditures, a whooping N25BN was still unaccounted for. The mystery behind Ahmed Salihijo's sudden death on the day of the inauguration of the Dr. Haroun Adamu panel is an unmistakable pointer to Gen Muhammadu Buhari's complicity.
The same Gen. Buhari has not been able to explain to Nigerians how his former 2 nd In Command Gen. Tunde Idiagbon died mysteriously when he led him to the Airport to celebrate President Abdusallam Abubakar's departure to perform the UMRA pilgrimage on 24 th March 1999.
Apart from Gen. Buhari's crocodile tears no one has let Nigerians into the mysterious death which was resultant from that ill-fated trip to the Airport on that ill-fated day.
Gen. Muhammed Buhari is a man of gross contradictions, always thinking within the box on pernicious contrivances bothering on violence, force and dictatorial tendencies. That is why Gen. Buhari's involvement in the boko haram tragedy is very unfortunate.
The metamorphosis of boko haram from a provincial machete-wielding bare-footed, rag-tag army of mainly scoundrels and never-do-wells to a sophisticated bomb throwing modern military super power did not surprise those who observe Nigeria political panorama with a microscope.
The North had prepared for President Jonathan's 2011 victory with a massive arms pileup since the death of President Umaru Yar Adua in April 2010. What was President Jonathan thinking when the North threw the bombshell that they will make Nigeria ungovernable if he won the 2011 Presidential election. Proof for this was also provided when boko haram chose Gen. Muhammadu Buhari as their Chief Negotiator during an attempted Dialogue between the Federal Government and boko haram in 2013. Gen. Buhari turned down this wonderful opportunity to etch his name in the golden pages of Nigerian history because he had planned boko haram as one of his two aces to fulfill his presidential dream. Gen. Buhari knew that without boko haram or the security issue, he had no business even venturing to contest the presidential ticket under the APC with the approval of his godfather, Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
If we want a peaceful and United Nigeria, we should shun voting for the APC which Gen Buhari himself rechristened All Progressives “Confidence”. The APC with Gen. Buhari as its presidential candidate is the greatest assurance and recipe for violence and disintegration.
This is because Gen. Buhari's greatest problem is Gen. Buhari himself. The non-repentant apostle of violence who turns 73 years on Dec. 17 th 2015 has a messianic mentality which inwardly goads him, to believe that he is the answer to Nigeria's multi-faceted problems. Gen. Buhari's vintage inflexibility and unique rigidity have robbed him of the presidency since the advent of his presidential odyssey in 2003. Gen Buhari hates Cross Border relationships and cross fertilization of ideas like plague just like he as he is a very bad listener and averse to good reasoning's and intellectual discuss and interrelationship.
But if anything has stood between Gen. Buhari and the presidency, it is his unbridled and Chauvinistic Islamic fundamentalism which his loyalists and followers have tried to down-play to no avail. This ethno-religious bigotry has so blinded Gen. Buhari to the extent that he does not see the southern Christian as a complete human being.
Gen. Buhari should not be trusted with the affairs of the country because I am highly convinced he is suffering from Alzheimer's disease which is a very serious form of Amnessia and Dementia. How can we explain Gen. Buhari's forgetting of his wifes name, his running mates name and his party's name. It is the height of dementia and at this stage Alzheimer's syndrome has already set in.
On the other hand President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan has excelled in all two areas in which his detractors have roundly condemned him, e.g corruption and security.
The fight against corruption has been at the front burner from the inception of the President Goodluck Jonathan administration. Transparency International Corruption Data Shows that for the last 20 years the period 2010-2014 recorded the lowest level of corruption in Nigeria. It also shows that 2010-2014 also recorded the best level of corruption in the last 35 years from the 2 nd Republic in 1980. It also stated that President Goodluck Jonathan also has managed corruption better than any other previous Nigerian leader from Independence 55 years ago and that Nigeria's corruption level is at par with other African countries during President Jonathans regime.
Nigeria recorded the highest levels of corruption between 1975-2007 specially during Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo's tenures of 1975-1979 and 1999-2007.
The controversial Halliburton and Siemens cases became so globally scandalous that even the dead knew that Nigeria was the most corrupt country in the world. While America jailed the Halliburton bribe givers Nigeria and President Olusegun Obasanjo covered up both shameful scandals as both the President and Vice President were fully involved. Both of them built high tech universities while in office. Both of them almost stripped themselves naked while fighting on how to share federal government parastatals. And today Obasanjo who left prison naked and in tatters is now one of the worlds unpublished billionaires.
President Jonathan has fought corruption by building strong institutions like the EFCC, the ICPC, the judiciary and by his unique non-interference policy. Today the multi-billion pension scams which have been with us from independence are a thing of the past. The Jonathan administration exposed them, prosecuted them and jailed them. When you build and strengthen democratic institutions the big, corrupt and fraudulent leaders will be exposed. And that is the blow what President Jonathan has delivered to corruption.
Regarding boko haram, so many have argued that President Obasanjo's, stick and carrot approach would have crushed the insurgents with the speed of a somersault. We are not talking about Odi or Zaki Biam both towns in Nigeria's minorities. Can Obasanjo level Sokoto town to the ground as he did to Odi. Remember Sokoto, Adamawa, Yobe, Borno etc are all in the core north.
Secondly, the Nigerian Military was badly underfunded by Olusegun Obasanjo and his military co-presidents.
Thirdly America refused to sell military wares to Nigeria because Obasanjo and the North have managed to convince them that boko haram is a war to preserve human rights of the insurgents.
But Kudos to the Nigerian Army for vanquishing boko haram after the acquisition of new arms, ammunitions, artilleries and hardware's. The battle to preserve Nigeria has been won by President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan and the best we can do is to return him into office in a massive show of electoral force by voting for the People's Democratic Party (PDP).
God save Nigeria.
Written by Ben Nanaghan.
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