The Media Office
of former President Goodluck Jonathan has described the APC government of
President Muhammadu Buhari as
a failure.
It said this
while accusing the federal government and the Special Assistant to President
Buhari on Media, Femi Adesina of peddling falsehood over claims that Nigerians
did not protest the hike in fuel price by the Buhari government because they
trusted the government.
In his response
to Adesina and the Nigerian government, over the claims, Jonathan’s Media
Office said fear, not trust was why Nigerians did not protest en masse against
fuel price hike under Buhari.
“When Femi
Adesina says that it is because of trust that Nigerians did not rise up against
the Buhari administration when it increased the pump price of petrol from N87
to N145, he betrays a deep ignorance and arrogance.
“First of all,
it was not Nigerians that rose up again the Jonathan administration when that
government increased the price of petrol on January 1, 2012. It was actually
members of the All Progressive Congress who sponsored the protests,” said the
statement signed by Reno Omokri on behalf of the Jonathan Media Office.
The statement
said Nigerians had not so soon forgotten how Malam Nasir El-Rufai led other
chieftains of the opposition to the Gani Fawehinmi Freedom Park, Ojota, Lagos,
where they attracted crowds by inviting top musicians to perform and by giving
out free food and drinks.
It continued:
“On December 15, 2015, the Nigerian Army, under President Muhammadu Buhari’s
command, killed 347 unarmed Shiite men, women, children and infants and buried
them in a mass grave as revealed by the panel of inquiry instituted by the
Kaduna State government.
“The excuse
given by the military for this massacre was that the Shiites had blocked a road
during one of their procession and this allegedly affected a trip by the chief
of army staff. After killing his followers and destroying their place of
worship, Sheikh Ibrahim Zak Zaky, the spiritual leader of the Nigerian Shiite
community, was illegally and unconstitutionally detained and has not been seen
or heard of in public since December 15, 2015.
“So when the
Buhari administration increased the pump price of petrol, Nigerians wisely
reasoned that if the Buhari administration can kill 347 unarmed Shiite men,
women, children and infants for blocking a road, it would be suicidal to give
them an opportunity to do the same thing to them on a wider scale,” said the
statement from the Jonathan Media Office.
Under the Buhari
administration, it said human life had become so cheap that the military and
security services routinely kill innocent Nigerians be it Shiites, peaceful
demonstrators or IDPs at the Rann IDP Camp.
“To say
Nigerians trust an administration that publicly boasted that it would not tell
Nigerians how much of their own money the President spent in treating himself
in London when the State House Clinic cannot boast of ordinary Panadol (by his
own wife’s testimony) is to speak a lie.
“Nigerians can
judge the nature of the man whose number one campaign promise was that “no
Nigerian Public official should receive medical treatment overseas at public
expense”. For him lies are cheap even if they are expensive for the Nigerian
public who has to pay the price.
“Nor have
Nigerians forgotten the promise to end corruption when the $25 billion Nigerian
National Petroleum Corporation scam is ringing in their ears along with the
denials by the Vice President that he never approved any contracts. How can
they trust a government that has still not released or acted on the SGF’s grass
cutter contract probe after six months?
“In the five
years that he governed Nigeria, President Goodluck Jonathan spent N16 trillion.
The economy grew. The Naira was stable. We had the greatest expansion of
infrastructure since the Gowon years and inflation was in single figures. In
the two years that President Muhammadu Buhari has ruled Nigeria, he has spent
N15 trillion. We have had recession. Naira collapsed.
“Inflation has
gone back to double digits and the only infrastructure that he has started and
completed is the Daura helipad. So Femi should spare us his propaganda and
accept the truth that he is the mouthpiece of a murderous regime sustained by
propaganda and surviving on corruption,” the statement added.
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