Kindergarten Presidency: APC insists on description, asks Jonathan to seek redress in court if libelled
The All Progressives Congress (APC) Monday, asked President Goodluck Jonathan to go to court if he felt libeled by the description of his presidency as a kindergarten presidency by its Interim National Chairman, Chief Bisi Akande.
The Interim National Publicity Secretary of the party, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, in a statement, said Chief Akande merely told the truth by his characterization of the Jonathan presidency asking ''Isn't truth a defence to libel?''
The party maintained that there was nothing strange or wrong in criticizing a democratically-elected President, after all he was neither an imperial president, a monarchy nor an emperor.
According to APC, 'if indeed this President is working tirelessly, we need to ask who he is working for, because Nigerians have yet to feel the impact of his administration. They are also not interested in the fact that the President once served as a deputy governor, governor and Vice President, because the experiences he supposedly garnered from doing so have not impacted positively on his duty as President. That's not a surprise, considering that the President owes his meteoric rise in politics to luck and destiny. Nothing else!'' the party said
The statement also described the presidency as an under-achieving one, always eager to celebrate tokenism, using questionable statistics.
It continued: ''As the presidency was composing its empty response to the serious issues raised by our highly-respected Chairman, the African Development Bank was saying in its annual report (African Economic Outlook), quoted by the local media on Sunday, that the proportion of people (Nigerians) living below the national poverty line has worsened from 65.5 per cent in 1996 to 69.0 per cent in 2010, most of those years under the PDP and the last four under President Jonathan.
'What therefore is there to celebrate in a presidency under which power generation has fallen to 2,500MW? What is there to celebrate in a presidency that has only given Nigerians widespread insecurity, unemployment, dilapidated infrastructure, oil theft and unbridled corruption. Of what use is the touted 6 percent increase in the GDP when over 40 percent of our youth are unemployed? APC queried.
On the response of the presidency to Chief Akande's assertions, APC said: ''In the true character of this presidency, it's increasingly irreverent and undignified spokesman failed to respond to the issues raised by Chief Akande, and instead chose to haul abuses at a man who is old enough to be his father. Such irresponsible act does no credit to the spokesman or the president he is serving, and Nigerians will definitely not forget such crudity in a hurry.'
''Where is the presidency's response to Chief Akande's assertion that he has written two letters to the President over the serious challenges facing the country, without getting a response? Where is the presidency's response to Chief Akande's assertion that President Jonathan is witch-hunting political opponents? These are the issues that Nigerians are interested in, not how many hours the President sleeps at night because he is supposedly working tirelessly', the party added.