The Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publiciy, Dr. Reuben Abati, has called on Nigerians not to vote for the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, APC, who he said represent the past but rather vote for President Goodluck Jonathan in the March 28 presidential election.
According to the Abati, a vote for President Jonathan will ensure consolidation of what his administration has achieved, assuring that the president will deploy the military to guarantee security in the country and ensure that no voter is intimidated during elections.
Abati made this call in an exclusive interview with Vanguard Newspaper, urging Nigerians to ask the opposition APC what it knows about the purported plan by the Jonathan administration to sack the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Professor Atahiru Jega.
“I think you should ask the APC whether there is something that they know that other people do not know. I say this because the President has never said anywhere that he is considering removing Jega or sending him on leave.
“In the interview that President Jonathan granted to Aljazeera recently, he made it very clear that he has never discussed such a subject with anybody and he is surprised that there is so much hue and cry, even among members of the National Assembly who ought to be better informed.
“The President is the appointing authority but there has been no time that he gave any indication of a plan to remove the INEC Chairman. The INEC Chairman is a political appointee. Political appointees do not go on terminal leave and you require the concurrence of the National Assembly to remove an INEC Chairman”.
Abati said it is the members of the APC that are crying wolf that should be the ones to explain why they think there are plans to remove Jega, insisting that rather than campaigning on issues and telling Nigerians what they stand for, they have been very busy coming up with conspiracy theories just to create false impressions and mislead the Nigerian people.
The presidential aide also said the postponement of the elections from the original date of 14 and 28 of February has given Nigerians the opportunity of doing a much closer assessment of the two major political parties and of the two major Presidential candidates.
“As we speak, I think it is now very clear to Nigerians that the APC does not represent any alternative because it is a party based on lies. It is at best the personal property of one individual, it is a party that has been unable to sell itself to Nigerians successfully and so it has resorted to propaganda, blackmail, and deceit. On the contrary, the PDP which is the party of the people, has been campaigning on issues and it is very clear to Nigerians that President Jonathan is better prepared for the job. He is running on the basis of his achievements and is calling on all Nigerians to join him to move the country forward and not to take this country backwards.
“General Buhari represents the past. President Jonathan represents the present and a brighter future. That is the difference. And let no one be in any doubt: it is shameful that a man like General Buhari who truncated Nigeria’s Second Republic in 1983, is now seeking to benefit from the democratic process.
“To go back to the question you raised about the INEC Chairman, what we find here is just another instance of the hallucinatory tactics being adopted by the APC. There is nowhere the President has said that he will remove him. I think Professor Attahiru Jega himself does not have any such anxiety because he has no reason to believe that there is any such plan”, Abati said.
On the Abuja Peace Accord and the increasing wave of politically motivated violence in the country as the elections approach, Abati said the current build up to the 2015 general elections has been particularly disturbing, because of the extreme desperation on the part of the APC, adding that there is so much anxiety about the outbreak of violence which is to be blamed on members of the APC and their leaders.
“For an election that has not taken place, they seem to be presenting their victory as if it is an inevitability that Nigerians cannot do anything about, and must therefore accept as a fait accompli. They have failed to realize that in an election, it is the people’s right to choose that is paramount and that it is the will of the people that must prevail. They have demonstrated their lack of faith in the democratic process in many ways. Long before now, Rotimi Amaechi, DG of the APC Presidential campaign threatened that if their candidate does not win, they will form a parallel government. He was more or less threatening fire and brimstone”.
According to Abati, APC supporters across the country have also shown great intolerance, adding that within the first week after the campaigns started, PDP campaign buses were burnt down in parts of the country.
“There are videotapes in circulation showing how bill-boards promoting President Jonathan were pulled down and destroyed by APC supporters.
“I can also confirm to you that we were attacked by APC supporters when we toured parts of the North. In Bauchi, we practically had to run out of the town because broom wielding, dangerous weapons-wielding, stone-throwing APC supporters became riotous without being provoked in any way by our team.
“In two other places in the North, our vehicles were stoned, I can confirm particularly to you that this was the case in Katsina and Adamawa and it was very unfortunate because we are not talking about small stones but big stones. They were not joking; they meant harm. These misguided youths take their cue from their leaders who have been telling all Nigerians that it is either Buhari wins or the heavens will fall”.
The presidential spokesman also reiterated the president’s popular saying that his ambition is not worth the blood of any Nigerian and that the president is committed to the conduct of a free and fair election as he did in 2011.
On accusations that the PDP and President Jonathan are promoting religious sentiments and agenda in the run up to the elections, Abati said there is no truth in that.
“The PDP is not promoting religious bias. What is true is that if you look at the PDP, it is a party that is made up of both Christians and Muslims, it is not a party of only one religious faith and I am sure that there will even be persons within the party who belongs to other faiths outside Christianity and Islam.
“If you look at the PDP Presidential ticket, it is a balanced ticket, the President is a Christian, the Vice President is a Muslim and the President has not discriminated against anybody on religious grounds. He has gone run round the entire country to places dominated by Christians and places dominated by Muslims because for you to be able to win the election into the office of the President you must have national spread, he said.
According to Abati, people are probably insinuating religious bias because the President has gone to worship in a couple of churches, adding that he is a Christian who has also met with Islamic clerics.
“He told them that if he is invited to any of their functions he will be glad to attend but that his VP is there, his VP is a Muslim, it is one ticket and he too has been attending a lot of Muslim programmes. If you look at the way government is structured, both major religions are given due recognition. It is wrong and unfair to say that we are playing the religious card, we are not playing the religious card. President Jonathan is the President of all Nigerians, whatever may be their ethnic or religious extraction and his message of transformation, continuity and consolidation is for all Nigerians not for any specific group”, Abati said.
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