Boko Haram Being Sponsored To Discredit Jonathan -PDP

Posted by African Examiner Featured, Latest Headlines, Politics Tuesday, March 18th, 2014

Ayo Balogun, Lagos

The People’s Democratic Party (PDP) says the dreaded Islamic terrorists, Boko Haram are being sponsored by unpatriotic elements to discredit the person and office of President Goodluck Jonathan.

The party said the tactics is to distract the President and constrain the successful delivery of his transformation programme so as to portray him as non-performing and finally ridicule his score card when time reckons.

A statement by the National Publicity Secretary of the PDP, Chief Olisa Metuh on Tuesday said it was beyond conjecture that the Nigerian version of terrorism is the product of a narrow political persuasion that defies logic and reason.

“We accept the reality of terrorism as a global phenomenon. However, the peculiar trend of the Nigerian version which subsists on a welter of nebulous demands and masked identities, hacking down innocent Nigerians -women, children and the elderly in an awful scorch earth fashion, and in an obstinate ridicule of dialogue, defies all reason and logic and only summarises a well considered agenda of national destabilisation for a purely selfish political cause. We pointedly finger the opposition.

“We recall statements by some politicians, vowing to make the country ungovernable for President Jonathan on the eve of the 2011 general elections, and therefore adjure Nigerians to rise against this brute ideology of violence from which a tiny clique of the political class intends to benefit ultimately.

“It is the climax of wickedness only heard of the Lucifer in the distant bosom of hell fire,” it said.

The party further declared that it was clear that President Jonathan was being persecuted for no other reason than being a Nigerian from the minority, arguing that no leader in the history of the country had faced the height of persecution that the President has been subjected to since he assumed office.

“Ironically, this is in spite of his humility and his fidelity to the orthodoxy of all democratic norms and values. This is in spite of his proven commitment to the unity and progress of every party of Nigeria irrespective of tribe and religion. Ironically, this is in spite of his proven competence and record delivery of his electoral promises,” the PDP claimed.

It commended the President for not only effectively containing the insurgency but beating down distractions and detractions to post unprecedented landmark achievements in all sectors of the economy in the last two and half years he has been at the helm of affairs.

The party listed some landmark achievements of his government to include the revolutionary excels in the works sector with the dualisation and rehabilitation of major trunk roads across the country in addition to the repair of Third Mainland Bridge and the commencement of the works on the Second Niger Bridge.

It also mentioned the resuscitation of the inland waterways and the railway system which had been abandoned for years, the establishment of Almajiri education system and nine new federal universities across the country.

Other achievements, according to the party, include the completion and commissioning of key power stations across the country, the new automobile policy, the revolution in the housing sector with establishment of the Nigeria Mortgage Refinance Company (NMRC), the first of its kind in the country, which is tailored to deliver 75,000 houses every year for Nigerians in addition to a million direct and indirect jobs as well as the Agricultural Transformation Agenda through which 6 million farmers have received inputs in a programme that targets an increase in domestic food production by an additional 20 million tonnes and creating 3.5 million jobs before the end of 2015.