APC to Jonathan: Go to court if you feel libelled

The All Progressives Congress has asked President Goodluck Jonathan to
go to court if he felt libelled by the description of his presidency
as a kindergarten presidency by the Interim National Chairman of the
APC, Chief Bisi Akande.
In a statement issued in Accra, Ghana on Monday by its National
Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party said Akande merely
told the truth by his characterization of the Jonathan presidency,
adding: “Isn’t truth a defence to libel?”
It also said there was nothing strange or wrong in criticizing a
democratically-elected president, adding that after all he is neither
an imperial president, a monarchy nor an emperor.
The APC said nothing confirmed Akande’s assertion that Jonathan is
running a kindergarten presidency than the crude manner it
(Presidency) responded to the frank but constructive criticism by the
APC National Chairman.
The party said: “In the true character of this presidency, its
increasingly irreverent and undignified spokesman failed to respond to
the issues raised by Chief Akande, and instead chose to haul abuses
at a man who is old enough to be his father. Such irresponsible act
does no credit to the spokesman or the president he is serving, and
Nigerians will definitely not forget such crudity in a hurry.
“Where is the presidency’s response to Chief Akande’s assertion that
he has written two letters to the President over the serious
challenges facing the country, without getting a response? Where is
the presidency’s response to Chief Akande’s assertion that President
Jonathan is witch-hunting political opponents? These are the issues
that Nigerians are interested in, not how many hours the President
sleeps at night because he is supposedly working tirelessly.
“In any case, if indeed this President is working tirelessly, we need
to ask who he is working for, because Nigerians have yet to feel the
impact of his administration. They are also not interested in the fact
that the President once served as a deputy governor, governor and Vice
President, because the experiences he supposedly garnered from doing
so have not impacted positively on his duty as President. That’s not a
surprise, considering that the President owes his meteoric rise in
politics to luck and destiny. Nothing else!”
The APC described the Presidency as an under-achieving one, always
eager to celebrate tokenism, using questionable statistics.
It added in the statement: “As the presidency was composing its empty
response to the serious issues raised by our highly-respected
Chairman, the African Development Bank was saying in its annual report
(African Economic Outlook), quoted by the local media on Sunday, that
the proportion of people (Nigerians) living below the national poverty
line has worsened from 65.5 per cent in 1996 to 69.0 per cent in 2010,
most of those years under the PDP and the last four under President
Jonathan.
“What therefore is there to celebrate in a presidency under which
power generation has fallen to 2,500MW? What is there to celebrate in
a presidency that has only given Nigerians widespread insecurity,
unemployment, dilapidated infrastructure, oil theft and unbridled
corruption. Of what use is the touted 6% increase in the GDP when over
40% of our youth are unemployed?”
The party described as a figment of the Presidency’s imagination the
claim of a feud between its leaders, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu and
Major General Muhammadu Buhari, saying the Peoples Democratic Party
and the Presidency have been peddling lies over a phantom feud because
they could not fathom how the leadership of the APC could put national
interest above personal considerations.
The party added: “Mr. President, don’t let your lick-spittle aides
deceive you. There is absolutely no feud between the two leaders.
Waiting for such a feud is like ‘Waiting for Godot’.”