During the flag-off of the People's Democratic Party rally in Lagos yesterday, the President said they have failed Nigeria. Read the full transcript below:
Your Excellency, the chairman of our great party, Alhaji Adamu Muazu,
senior members of our party here on this great occasion, we have spent
so much time here so I will not bore you with protocols.
Today, I am going to address only a segment of the Nigerian
population. I am going to address the people who are voting for the
first time, those of you who will attain 18 years this year.
That means I am addressing the young people. I do not want to address
old people like me, because we are spent already and I will crave your
indulgence Nigerian youths, those of you who are here, and those of you
watching us at home, listen to what I am saying.
I am going to address political gatherings in 37 cities and I am
going to dwell on three key things. I am focusing on the young people.
Whatever I say, when you go back, call your aunts or call your
uncles, your father or your mother, or your cousin, that is at least 60
years old and confirm and ask them what you heard that the Presidential
candidate of PDP mentioned in any of the rallies because 2015 elections
is about the young people: either you vote and continue to be relevant
in Nigeria’s political history or you vote for you to be irrelevant.
And I will repeat it, those of you who are voting for the first time,
your decision to vote could mean you vote for a Nigerian youth to be
important, to be relevant in this country or be a Nigerian person to be
treated as a nonsense person and I believe all of you want to be
relevant.
Of course you have seen…we have just introduced our governorship
candidates and you see how many of them that is of your age bracket.
Which other party will give that kind of opportunity?
I am going to dwell on three things because those who say they want
to take over power from PDP have been telling a lot of lies. They have
hired people from all over the world and those of you in the social
media carry all forms of lies, painting all kinds of colour and giving
me all kinds of face that I cannot defend.
If you listen to us in the 37 places we will address these issues,
you will now know where to cast your votes. I will address you in all
the places on three issues.
The first is the issue of insecurity. I am also going to address
whether this administration is fighting or encouraging corruption. I am
going to address the issue of weak government and unfocused government
that has no plans. Yours is to listen and compare with everything that
has been done before in this country and take a decision.
I will not keep you here for too long because we still have the
opportunity… I am going to raise just very few issues today and tomorrow
I will continue in Enugu and then on and on and on.
First let me tell you about the voter’s card. First when we came in
here we saw some placards, some of you complaining that we are yet to
get a permanent voters card. Only yesterday, I directed that every
Nigerian (of voting age) must vote. INEC must make sure and government
will not allow a situation where some (eligible) Nigerians will not
vote; we will not allow it. All Nigerians must vote and I mean it.
I told you that I am addressing those of you who are voting for the
first time. Those of you in the age bracket of 20 to 24, if you go back,
ask your uncles, before 2011 no Nigerian complained that he had no
voters card. People voted themselves into office. We came and said every
Nigeria vote must count and since then, the voter’s card has become
relevant.
This is the party that is giving political strength to all Nigerians.
Already you have been told from intelligence reports that some people
are already cloning cards so that your voter’s card will no longer be
relevant. Is that the kind of people you want to take over government?
(Crowd shouts NO…!)
They want to take us to the old days when nobody saw voter’s cards
but results were announced. They want to take us to the old days when
ballot papers would be in South Africa and results would be announced.
Are you going back to the old days? (Crowd shouts NO…!)
Nigeria must move forward, Nigeria is for the youths. Nigeria is not
for old people like us. The young generation must redefine this country.
We must take this country to where we want it to be. Nobody can push us
backwards. The past is past. They have led us backward and backward.
In fact when we were young, we were told that at Independence,
Nigeria, Brazil, Malaysia, Indonesia and even India were all at the same
level. That was what we were told when I was in the secondary school
and the university. Now all those countries have left us behind and now
some people want to take us backward. Do you want to go backwards?
(Crowd shouts NO…!) Nigerian youths do you want to go backwards… (Crowd
shouts NO…!)
Young Nigerians were doing things fantastically well, they were
acting films and these very people were snubbing them, they were playing
music and these very people were abusing them. But we are encouraging
them and the world has accepted them. Do you want to move forward?
(Crowd shouts YES…!) Do you want to go backward? (Crowd shouts NO…!)
I told you I was going to address things and I will be very brief.
They talk about insecurity. That they will fight insecurity. And you
will ask are our armed forces weak? Are the Nigerians in the Armed
Forces weak? If we have problems what is the cause—equipment. And
somebody who wakes up and tells young people of 23 years old that he
wants to fight insecurity, ask him when he was the head of government
did he buy one rifle for a Nigerian soldier. (Crowd shouts NO!…)
These people did not buy anything for the Nigerian soldiers. They
refused to equip them. No attack helicopter, nothing. Ask them what they
did with the defence budget for the whole time they were in office. No
country equips armed forces overnight. What they use is quite expensive
and they are built over the years. Even if you spend 10 billion dollars
today, you cannot equip the army, navy and air force.
The capacity is built overtime. They refused to build the capacity.
They instigated crisis and now they are telling us they will fight
insurgency. Ask them and they will answer. I will elaborate more as we
progress to other places.
The next is that they say government is corrupt; or we are not
fighting corruption. Only yesterday, I addressed the anti-corruption
agencies. I said look people are deceiving young Nigerians. You must
tell Nigerians what you are doing. We have arrested more people within
this period. Gotten more convictions within this period but everyday
they tell us lies.
At this point, let me apologize to some Nigerian civil servants who
did not receive their salaries in December early enough and I will tell
you what happened. I apologize to those families that suffered because
we believe that for you to fight corruption; you must take measures,
establish and strengthen institutions. You just don’t wake up, enter the
street, arrest one person and lock up and show on television and say
that you are fighting corruption.
If they had succeeded in fighting corruption, corruption would not
have been with us here today. If they had set up structures and
especially in today’s modern science using ICT to manage resources, we
would not have been talking about corruption today. What happened in
December was that IPPIS, software for processing salaries, — sometimes
people steal through salaries- and some federal government agencies
including some ministries tried to divert funds to pay some allowances.
The system is scientific, it is not a human being, and as long as money
meant for salaries is about to be diverted to other things, it shuts
down. Those departments of government were shut down, this is the only
way that you can prevent corruption. (Crowd claps …)
I served in Bayelsa as deputy governor and governor for eight years; I
also served as Vice President and President for another four years at
the centre, for all this period, the fertilizer area is where states and
federal governments spend billions of naira but less than 10 per cent
of fertilizers go to the farmers. The rest is stolen and sent out of the
country. Even the 10 per cent sometimes is adulterated. We came and
cleaned up the sector and today there is no corruption in the fertilizer
industry again.
What did we do? We assembled some young Nigerians that are IT gurus
and we developed the e-wallet system and through that the farmers now
get their fertilizers directly and nobody is cheating the government
again. Is that not the way to stop corruption? (Crowd shouts YES! …)
If somebody tells you that the best way to fight corruption is to
arrest your uncle or father and show him on television, well, you won’t
stop corruption, you will even encourage corruption. I used to tell
people and I will also address press conferences so that people can ask
me direct questions. Armed robbery is still with us, despite the fact
that we are shooting (death penalty) armed robbers. Is that stopping
armed robbery? (Crowd shouts NO…!)
So arresting people and demonstrating on television will not fight
corruption, we must set up institutions, strengthen them to prevent
people from even touching the money and that is what we are working on
and we are succeeding.
Some people say they are finding corruption… some of you know, I am
not addressing people of 20 years and below but people from 30 years and
so on… Nigerians go to fuel stations and sleep overnight to buy fuel or
tip those who sell fuel to buy fuel. They hoard fuel and they benefit
from the hoarding. Who are those who benefitted from hoarding fuel?
Since we came on board, have you suffered? Do you need to bribe someone
before you get fuel?
When the crisis of insecurity came up, we had nothing. So to get
things very quickly, we used some vendors to make procurement. But now
what we are doing is government to government. Now any new procurement
we are doing whether for the air force, navy or army it’s government to
government, so there is nothing like corruption anymore. Even if we have
some issues, maybe… is that not the way to fight corruption?
You must prevent people from touching money, you don’t give them the
opportunity or test them with money and this is what government is doing
and we are succeeding in a number of areas in our procurement
processes. The relevant agencies will address Nigerians for you to
appreciate what we are doing.
They say the government is weak, they say we are un-focused; we have no plan.
They say we are weak because there were some people who took our
fathers, our mothers and our uncles while they were abroad put them in a
crate and flew them to Nigeria but they were intercepted by superior
powers. That blocked Nigerians from even going to Britain at a time and
the relationship between Nigeria and Britain… the whole world isolated
Nigeria.
They said that is the way to fight corruption. So immediately I
suspect your uncle, I can just crate him and throw him into Kirikiri. Is
that the way to stop corruption? (Crowd shouts NO!)
If somebody tells you that he will not follow due process… I came in
with Yar’Adua and he advocated due process and I stand by due process.
Any country that does not abide by the rule of law is a jungle.
Do you want Nigeria to be a jungle society? (Crowd shouts NO!)
Immediately I suspect you that you have done something wrong I just ask
the police or army to arrest you and throw you into jail. Is that the
country you want? (Crowd shouts NO!)
They say to be strong is to jail people indiscriminately for 300 years. Is that where you want to go? (Crowd shouts NO!)
A country is like an industry. It must be managed properly by people who have brain and great ideas upstairs.
Let me just give you some highlights: they say we are not focused; we
are not planning. But our economy has become the biggest in Africa; it
was not the biggest in Africa before. Without planning, can your economy
become the biggest in Africa? (Crowd shouts NO!)
They say we are not planning, we are not focused but we have cleaned
up the corruption in fertilizer distribution in the country. The farm
inputs are getting to the farmers and our import bills, the money we use
in buying things from outside is coming down. Can you get that without
planning? (Crowd shouts NO!)
You are no longer queuing up and leaving your cars in fuel stations. Can you do that without planning? (Crowd shouts NO!)
I believe that some few years back some young people have not seen
trains except when you travel abroad and you have never boarded a train.
Now our trains are moving. Can you do that without planning? (Crowd
shouts NO!)
In the power sector, we are in Lagos, Egbin power sector got burnt in
2005 and remained so until now when we are fixing it. We have been able
to finish the privatization of the power sector. This is an interface
period but you already know that the generation capacity is almost
double. Can you do that without planning? (Crowd shouts NO!)
This government feels that Nigerians are very dynamic people, very
creative, very industrious, very talented in music, arts and business.
Many of them do not have money and you know we are almost 200 million in
Nigeria and we cannot reach everybody the same day. We came up with the
concept of YOUWIN to give grants not loans to young Nigerians that have
ideas. If you interview them, some of them are already manufacturing
and in the next four to five years, we will be exporting things from
this country. And they say we have no plans for the youths? They should
come and tell us what plans they have for the youths.
I believe that young Nigerians, not people who are spent and
finished. not people of my age, we are gone… that is why I said I am
addressing people from the ages 18- 23 those who are voting for the
first time, we believe that you people will take us to the moon. My
generation has failed we couldn’t take Nigeria to the moon. Look at what
India is doing. Look at what countries we were at par with at
independence are doing and I said for us to get to the moon, that’s a
special area; you need to expose your best brains.
I came up with a special scholarship that you must first of all make a
First Class in the university. We have scholarship for everybody but
you must first of all make First Class from your university and then we
test the best brains and send them to the best 25 universities in the
world. Can someone who has no plans for the future of this country do
that? (Crowd shouts NO!.)
Can somebody who does not think about the Nigerian youth do that? (Crowd shouts NO!)
Do you want to go back to those days when they had no plans for us? (Crowd shouts NO!)
When I came on board as President, I noticed that though in the
country and on paper, there is this programme or policy of government
that every state must get a Federal government owned university. Out of
the 36 states we have, 12 had no federal universities and people were
deceiving Nigerians that they were doing something.
I said we must establish these 12 universities in the remaining 12
states, start as small universities and grow and we have done that
successfully and they are growing gradually.
We did not stop there. We looked at the school drop-outs in some
parts of the country and they were quite high. We came up with the
Almajiri educational programme and we thank the Governors from many of
the states where we have those set of students. We have programmes for
Almajiri students and we have the programme for out-of-school children.
Can somebody who has no plan for the country think about that kind of
programme? (Crowd shouts NO!).
You will ask some of those people who are deceiving you now and who
hired some people from outside the country to go on social media and
tell all kinds of lies, that when they were in power did they build any
nursery school for anybody? (Crowd shouts NO!) Ask them, ask them, I say
go and ask them.
If they did not build nursery schools for anybody, what did they use our money for? They built prisons or universities for you?
I will build universities for you, I will build secondary schools for you, I will build primary schools for you.
They say we have no plans for this country but we established the
Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF)—out of the money that comes into this
country we reserve a little so you just don’t squander it.
This is a government that introduced for the first time what we call
the SWF and I want to thank the Governors from the states who keyed into
the SWF idea. In addition to the SWF, you know that there are some
stolen monies, which from time to time government gets back. They have
been getting these monies back but we do not know how they are spending
it.
The ones that have come in within this period, we have not even
started spending it but first of all we agree on how to spend it.
Because we have security challenges and this money is primarily for
security and they used security channels to take it, 50 per cent of it
will be used for security, 25 per cent of it for development and 25 per
cent of it will be used for future generations. This is the decision we
have taken even before we start spending the money. Can somebody who has
no plan for the future of the country do that thing? (Crowd shouts NO!)
They should come and tell you what they used our monies for.
We believe that so many young Nigerians, some young workers find it
very difficult to own a house of their own. We introduced the Mortgage
Refinancing Company. It is just coming up, estates are being built and
we are working with the Labour unions. As we pursue that programme in
the next five years, most Nigerian workers either working in private
sector or in government can own houses. They have no plans for you; they
are coming to tell you false stories. We have said you do not need to
have so much money to own a house. Do you want to go back to the old
days? (Crowd shouts NO!)
We have plans for employment generation. We know one of the greatest
challenges for most governments including Nigeria is to get jobs for our
youths but we are not sleeping. So far we have been able to create a
number of jobs… I have set up two bodies headed by the Vice President
made up of people in government and the private sector. We call them
Presidential Job Creation Board and Micro, Small and Medium Scale
Enterprises Council, working very hard to ensure that every year two
million jobs are created. Can somebody who has no plans do that? (Crowd
shouts NO!)
Of course we have been told that I have other opportunities. I have
many other things to say but people are getting tired … (Crowd shouts
NO!, go ahead) … we’d have the opportunity to talk and talk and talk.
Some groups of people have said that you have to vote for your
liberation or imprisonment. Some groups of people came, and I read it in
the papers, when they see people in government maybe governors,
ministers, commissioners and so on … they will say we will draw a line,
we are not probing the past because they want to deceive them to get
their support.
So they will draw a line and start fighting corruption after they
cross the bridge. Only two days ago, somebody stood in Port Harcourt and
said he was going to catch people in the streets and throw them into
Kirikiri.
The same mouth says something from the right, and from the left,
making contradicting statements. Can you trust those people? (Crowd
shouts NO!) Are they not deceiving you? (Crowd shouts YES!)
They want power by all means and all what they want to use power for
is to lock up and imprison their enemies. I have no enemy to fight. My
interest is your interest. My interest is the Nigerian interest and for
the future generations and young Nigerians to develop. Not to fight
enemies. We must stop corruption. I will not stop corruption by catching
people, putting them in trailers and dumping them off to be killed. You
can’t stop corruption that way. Someone wakes up and he feels he can
jail all his enemies and he thinks that is how to fight corruption? I
think we have advanced beyond that point.
Somebody wakes up and says “O, Nigerian women I am going to give you
position.’’ And you ask him when you were a Head of Government, you had a
cabinet, I have the list of the cabinet members, there was no one
single woman. Not even one in the cabinet.
So Nigerian women, you cast your votes and go back to the kitchen and die there or you cast your votes to liberate yourself.
The Nigerian women must decide where to cast their votes: you vote
and go back to the kitchen and die in the kitchen or you cast your votes
to liberate yourself. We are ready to liberate all Nigerian women.
Let me say one more thing and conclude. I read a headline in one
paper yesterday: MEND DUMPS JONATHAN… did you read it? (Crowd shouts
Yes!)
I am from the Niger Delta. The leader of MEND is one Okah. He is in
South African prison. Why is he there? South Africa is not Nigeria where
people will say Oh, President (Jonathan) manipulated it. Okah is in the
prison because 1
st October 2010 when we were to celebrate
our independence, our golden year of independence, Okah was procured by
some Nigerians to assassinate me. Okah bombed Abuja, but the attempt was
to assassinate me and South Africa intelligence system caught him in
the plan to assassinate me. He is now in jail in South Africa and they
say MEND dumps Jonathan.
Okah that wanted to assassinate Jonathan, will he support Jonathan?
(Crowd shouts NO!) I am told that Okah is supporting some people… I am
told that Okah who is in a South African prison for killing Nigerians is
endorsing some people. Is that the country you want to live in? (Crowd
shouts NO!) Count me out.
Let me conclude by thanking all Nigerians, especially Lagosians. Let
me sincerely on behalf of my party apologise to you because we are
having this rally today so the whole of Lagos is at a standstill. We beg
you, we have to do it and we know you love us, will support us and we
promise to make sure that… this is the very first government that has
supported the industrial sector very well. Ask your brothers and sisters
in the private sector, if they are sincere they will say that we have
come up with policies that have encouraged commerce and industry.
Government alone cannot employ people. The private sector must grow
to create jobs for the people. Bear with us because the PDP government
will continue to encourage the private sector to create jobs for
Nigerians.
Finally, let me tell all of you especially those of you, who want to
go to the National Assembly that we just had a national conference. The
document from that conference, because of the controversy we have in the
present National Assembly, you know how chaotic the present Assembly
is, we know that if you bring that document to the Assembly they will
dump it.
So we want to present it to the next Assembly. So those people you
are sending, if you mean well for this country, you must vote people who
can go to the National Assembly, discuss and adopt that document that
our leaders have agreed so that this country can move forward.
I stand today in the city of Lagos, in the south west on behalf of
the leader of our party, Alhaji Muazu, the Vice President and all the
leaders and promise that if you vote the PDP en masse to the National
Assembly and to the Presidency, we will adopt that document so that this
country will move forward.
That document is to liberate you, we did not influence it, our
fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters that are credible came up with
it.
Ask them, we did not influence it. I did not ask them to dot any `I’
or cross any `T’ because I have no personal interest. My interest is the
Nigerian interest.
It is either we vote to be prisoners as we were- and I will tell you
maybe some of you do not know, in 1983, I don’t know for the young
people, some of you who are writing all sort of things on the social
media. In 1983/84, what they called discipline as a post graduate
student instead of reading my book, the whole night I queued up to buy
two tins of milk. And they say that is discipline.
So we should make you queue up the whole night as students to buy two
tins of milk? Is that the discipline you want? (Crowd shouts NO!)
You must vote for your liberation, you must vote for your
development, you must vote to take Nigeria to the moon. You cannot vote
to take Nigeria backward.
Leave us who are half dead to bury our dead. You must vote for the
progress of this country, you must vote for the Nigerian youth, you must
vote for the Nigerian women. PDP!… POWER!
Thank you all.
Culled from Premium Times
