Former President Dr. Goodluck Jonathan has dismissed claims by the Borno State governor, Kashim Shettima, that he was poor in his choices and ran a bad government, accusing the governor of being economical with the truth.
He challenged Shettima who is also the Chairman of Northern Governors Forum to be honest enough and tell the world all he knew about the abduction of over 200 students of the Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok especially the reason he exposed the girls to risk that insurgents kidnapped them.
The former leader said this in a statement by his Media Adviser, Ikechukwu Eze. Shettima, at a book presentation, ‘On a Platter of Gold- How Jonathan won and lost Nigeria”, written by Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, said though Jonathan was a good man, he made poor choices and ran the country poorly during his time as president. He claimed that the former president was made to believe that he was the one that took the abducted female students.
Hitting back at the governor, Jonathan accused Shettima of exhibiting parochial and jaundiced understanding of issues he talked about and being economical with the truth on matters regarding the abduction of the students .
He also dismissed claims in the book by the former minister of Sports and incumbent National Publicity Secretary of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Abdullahi, describing them as lies and misleading.
The statement highlighted key achievements of the former President, which, it said, were verifiable.
The statement said: “He should be able to tell us if it was Jonathan’s poor choices that led the governor to expose students of Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok to avoidable danger, in total disregard of a Federal Government directive to the governors in the three states most affected by Boko Haram to relocate their students writing the West African School Certificate Examinations to safe zones.”
It continued, “as a man who had never seen anything good in the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan on account of party and other differences, it has remained our considered view that in a democracy, Governor Shettima and others like him are entitled to their opinion, no matter how jaundiced.
“However, it is a sad commentary on the character of some of our politicians that they go to any length to make spurious statements, in pursuit of the sad narrative to remain politically correct. We cannot be deceived by his crocodile tears and patronising claim that “Jonathan is essentially a decent man”, which is a ploy he deployed to justify his false allegation of a lost glory.
“The man who today speaks of squandered goodwill should be able to tell Nigerians what percentage of the votes Jonathan got in 2011 from Borno State at the height of that his envisaged glory according to Shettima, and what it became in subsequent elections. What was obvious yesterday and has remained so today is that Governor Shettima and those who think like him never liked Jonathan, based on some parochial and paternalistic sentiments.”
The statement stressed: “We didn’t expect anything less from Governor Shettima, knowing the ignoble roles he played in frustrating the war waged by the past administration against Boko Haram, even in his own Borno State.
“The governor is now denying that he had no hand in the kidnap of the Chibok girls even before anybody accused him of culpability. However, we share the view of those who insist that the governor had other things up his sleeve when he promised the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) that he would secure the girls, and ended up doing the very opposite, by deliberately abandoning them to their fate, without any security presence in their school.
“It is instructive that while other governors in the zone heeded the security advice, Shettima remained the only one that flagrantly flouted it. Should we also fail to point out that his decision to reward the principal of Chibok Secondary School, who was uncharacteristically absent on the night terrorists stormed the school, with the post of a commissioner, did throw up more questions than answers?”
On the issue of bad governance, as alleged by the governor , the statement stressed: “Talking about accountability, perhaps, Shettima should also do well to explain to the good people of Borno State and Nigerians what he did with the over N60 billion local governments fund, left by his predecessor, Senator Ali Modu- Sheriff.
“We understand Governor Shettima and those who spoke like him accused Jonathan of bad governance and poor choices, and we would like to know if it was bad governance that led Jonathan to assemble a-yet-to be matched crop of dynamic cabinet and economic management team made up of tested technocrats like Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala in Finance ministry, Dr. Shamsuddeen Usman in Planning, Mr. Olusegun Aganga in Trade and Investments, as well as, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina leading the charge in Agriculture.
On the book the former President said: “we have watched for some time as some outrageous fabrications are extracted from its pages day after day by the media. When the publication of the book, with an ominous title was first mooted, we knew it would be full of bile and sour grapes. We didn’t expect truth, sincerity and accuracy of narration, given that the author, who was sacked from his ministerial position by the subject of the book, is now the spokesman for the ruling APC.
We will therefore like to dissociate former President Jonathan from the book’s salacious contents, with all the obvious distortions, lies and exaggerations. Its pages are populated with gossip, politically influenced newspaper articles, uncoordinated raw data and unproven claims.
|Sun
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