resident Goodluck Jonathan refuted the claim by national leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu that he (president) offered him (Tinubu) the position of Vice President in the planned Interim National Government (ING).
A statement from the office of the APC national leader had alleged that Jonathan had offered to make him Vice President if he supported the formation of interim national government.
But President Jonathan, who described Tinubu’s claim as a lie, said, “Those who seem determined to pull down this country will lie with black information, are the enemies of this country and do not deserve to be given the opportunity to occupy, to enjoy opportunities that they do not deserve.”
Speaking through his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Dr. Reuben Abati, Jonathan said as the democratically elected president, his ambition could never be to head an Interim National Government under whatever circumstances.
Abati said, “Except people have not been following the news or they have chosen willfully to play deaf and dumb, they will know and the facts are there that President Jonathan has said again and again, that an idea of an interim national government is prosprosterous and to use his exact words also treasonable; and that he has never anywhere discussed that idea with anybody and he has never proposed it at any forum.
“He is going to this presidential elections on the basis of the records of his achievements, on the conviction that he has served Nigerians well and the overwhelming majority of Nigerians are appreciative of the achievements of his administration and are therefore solidly behind him and will vote for him massively on March 28.
“He, therefore, has no reason whatsoever to support such an unconstitutional proposition as Interim National Government which in its fullest will amount to assault on democratic principles under this circumstance.”
Abati added that an attempt to de-construct the statement that purportedly emanated from Tinubu’s office would readily expose the absurd nature of the claim.
He said, “The absolutely ridiculous nature of it in the sense that given the configuration of Nigeria, is not likely, totally impossible to have an ING arrangement in which you will have a southerner as the president and then another southerner as vice president. It is absured. It is not something that is likely to work given the nature of our politcs.
“But the Tinubu camp putting out that statement were so much in a hurry to engage in their usual game of deceiving the public of propagandaism of the current electoral process, that the emptiness, the hollowness, the shallowness of their proposition escaped them.
“And what I have tried to do is to expose that shallowness, that hollowness and to appeal to all right thinking persons to dismiss it as another gimmick coming from a desperate political group seeing that defeat is steering them in the face are resorting to greater desperation.
“And who knows may witness even far greater desperation from their camp as we get closer to election day. But our appeal to Nigerians is that this country is greater than everyone’s ambition and at the end of the day what is important is Nigeria.”