The All Nigeria Peoples Party [ANPP] viewed last Sunday’s presidential media chat, where President Goodluck Jonathan sought to engage the Nigerian citizens with regard to his work, with interest. Bearing in mind that the session was designed to candidly present The President’s progress, ideas and plans as the head of the Federal Republic with the utmost frankness and simplicity, our great party believes that President Jonathan only succeeded in obfuscating the minds of Nigerians.
For starters, when asked about the ongoing constitution amendment, the President declined to take any position on the myriad of issues being raised for amendment in the constitution, with the self-serving explanation that it would be in the best interest of Nigerians to suggest areas in the constitution to be amended. However, we believe that it is the sign of a leader with ideas and direction to have a clear-cut legislative agenda, as a signature of his policy philosophy.
Secondly, when he was reminded about his campaign promise of reducing poverty, President Jonathan quickly charged in to tell Nigerians that he never promised to reduce poverty, but rather told the populace when he was campaigning for their votes that he wanted to ‘‘create wealth’’. This is a clear political equivocation which is patently illiterate at best and self-indicting at worst. Nigerians are now left to wonder who Mr President had set out to empower all along. This is because, for sure, creating wealth might actually be a metaphor for putting more money into the hands of his already rich party members and cronies, while leaving the poor of the nation in the hands of chance.
Thirdly, The President tried to evade the question of his government’s lack of ‘‘enforcement’’ in the fight against corruption. But when he was forced to give an answer with specific reference to the Siemens and Halliburton cases, narrated that it was difficult for an incumbent government to fight the corruption carried over from a previous administration. We wonder whether he was trying to say that previous governments had vacated the The State House with all the paraphernalia and powers of law enforcement and relevant documents needed to know what is the reality concerning these and many other clear cases of corrupt practices at the highest level.
We believe that the international community that rated us abysmally low in the fight against corruption had already seen the insincerity of the present government in tackling corruption head-on. In fact, the foreign firms indicted in the corruption saga had been punished in their own countries, while this PDP government tries to sweep everything under the carpet in order not to rock their gravy train of ‘‘chop I chop’’. We in the ANPP believe that President Goodluck Jonathan needs more than a media chat to communicate to the disillusioned masses his government’s vaunted vision, progress and plans. Action speaks louder than word.
Signed:
Hon Emma Eneukwu
National Publicity Secretary
ANPP
