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| President Goodluck Jonathan |
Lawyers and civil rights activists, on
Wednesday, assessed President Goodluck Jonathan’s New Year message,
urging him to match his words with actions.
The lawyers and activists including a
legal practitioner, Mr. Ebun Olu-Adegboruwa, Mr. Bamidele Aturu and the
President of the Campaign for Democracy, Dr. Joe Okei-Odumakin,
dismissed Jonathan’s promise to fight corruption and increase power
supply to 18 hours per day.
He said that in 2011, the President promised to fight corruption and stabilise power supply.
These, the lawyer said, Jonathan had not fulfilled.
Adegboruwa said that Jonathan should
start his war against corruption with the sacking of the Aviation
Minister, Ms. Stella Oduah, over the alleged N255m car scandal.
He said, “Several probe panels and
committees have been set up by this regime. Their reports have not seen
the light of the day. It is difficult now to imagine that one can do, in
one year, what one was unable to do, in three years.
“The case of corruption in this
particular regime has become very notorious, with all the
anti-corruption agencies, totally castrated and starved of funds, in
order to make them ineffective.”
Adegboruwa noted that he did not believe that Jonathan would fight corruption this year.
“If the President has, in the course of
his encounter with God, contracted a New Year resolution on this point,
then he should start by firing, immediately, the aviation minister,” he
said.
The lawyer said that the dwindling power
supply in the country was very alarming, in spite of the Jonathan
administration’s huge investment in the sector.
According to him, it will be difficult to trust or rely upon any promise made by the President, going by his antecedents.
On her part, Okei-Odumakin described Jonathan’s New Year message as an annual ritual.
She said that Nigerians would hold the President accountable at the end of the year.
Okei-Odumakin said, “Over the years,
Nigerians have had to wake up to such New Year promises only to end same
years in mysteries of no basic amenities.”
On the war against graft, she said
willingness of the government to fight corruption entailed its readiness
to be politically committed to it.
“This is the only way that Nigerians
will begin to have trust in such declarations that may be made by the
government on a day like this,” she said.
Also, a lawyer, Mr. Bamidele Aturu, said Jonathan’s war against corruption would be used to harass political opponents.
He said, “The war will be used as a tool
against political opponents. While it is shameful that we remember the
war against corruption only when we have opponents to deal with or
political battles to fight, I really have no problem with it for as long
as those who are prosecuted really have soiled their hands.
“It is no defence to corruption allegation or charge to say that one is being politically victimised.”
He also dismissed Jonathan’s promise to increase power supply to 18 hours in a day.
Aturu said, “With respect to the promise
to increase the supply of electricity to 18 hours, if it happens it
would be one of the wonders of the world. The infrastructure on the
ground belies that ambitious promise.”
He wondered how the promise would be fulfilled in the face of acute shortage of gas and manpower.
“If you ask me, we are tired of empty
promises. We want actions. We want politicians who looted our treasury
to be dealt with promptly according to the law and we want dividends of
democracy,” he said.
Also, a leader of the All Progressives
Congress, Mr. Rotimi Fashakin, said the President was incapable of
making any meaningful plan for Nigeria’s growth.
Fashakin, who was the National Publicity
Secretary of the defunct Congress for Progressive Change, said this in a
telephone interview with The PUNCH in Abuja, on Wednesday.
The party chief explained that there was no way any reasonable Nigerian would invest his hopes on the President’s promises.
Fashakin said, “The truth must be told
that Jonathan has no plan for Nigeria. He’s incapable of putting
together a plan for Nigeria.
“There is no way any reasonable Nigerian
should believe him. Right now, they are even afraid to give us any
deadline when we will have uninterrupted power supply in the country,
because they know that the deadlines that the President has given so
many times, have failed.
“There is this thing they talk about capacity, when you don’t have it, you don’t have it. There is just no two ways about it.
“This is an administration that is
incapable of doing anything meritorious for the people of this country.
Let no one be deluded into thinking that the leopard can change its
skin; there is no way he can suddenly translate from incompetence to
competence.”
Also, the Coalition Against Corrupt
Leaders said Nigerians would find it hard to believe President
Jonathan’s promise to fight corruption more intensely in 2014 in his New
Year message.
CACOL’s Executive Chairman, Mr. Debo Adeniran, spoke with one of our correspondents on the telephone said.
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