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Team Goodluck Recants:

The presidency yesterday distanced President Goodluck Jonathan from reports that he had called governors of certain states ‘rascals’ when he said “the southwest is too important to be left in the hands of rascals”.

Presidential spokesman, Ima Niboro, said that “at no time did the president ascribe the ‘rascal’ he mentioned to anyone.

“Please note that the president didn’t call any names when he said the southwest is too important to be left in the hands of rascals,” he said. “So anyone who wants to appropriate the name to himself is welcome to do so.”

Mr. Jonathan had, on Tuesday, while flagging off his presidential campaign in the southwest geo-political zone in Ibadan, made comments about the PDP’s election chances in the southwest.

“We must take it over from them,” he said. “The ruling party must take over Lagos. We must also take over Osun and Ekiti states.”

Team Fashola Reply:

Governor Babatunde Fashola of Lagos State, yesterday, expressed disappointment with the statements credited to President Goodluck Jonathan during the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) campaign in Ibadan, Oyo State. Mr Jonathan had reportedly said: “We (PDP) must take over all the States in the Southwest. The zone is too important to be left in the hands of rascals.” Describing Mr Jonathan’s statements as one that is not worth coming from a president, Mr Fashola, speaking to journalists at the presidential wing of the Murtala Muhammed Airport, said that leaders seeking elective offices in Nigeria should refrain from using words that are offensive. “The office of the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is a very high office and I don’t think that the kind of language coming from the PDP presidential candidate is presidential,” he said. “But Lagosians will have to make the determination for we are beginning to see clearly the pattern of the candidacy of the PDP candidate who seeks to lead this country to poverty, inefficiency and to insecurity.” “But having said that, I think that I have asked myself whether the president is more concerned about who is governor of Lagos or becoming president. I think that if the PDP wants to swap candidates for the governorship of Lagos I will be ready to face him, because his candidate is not talking about what he wants to do in Lagos.

And I will leave our own presidential candidate, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, to respond to the president on issues that are genuine to Nigerians; why the federal roads in Lagos have not been fixed, why Lagosians do not have electricity, why Lagosians have to pay all the cost of their own security in spite of the enormous votes every year by the federal government on security,” added the governor.

 The PDP versus the ACN Explaining that elections are meant to be won by men of integrity, Mr Fashola urged Nigerians not to vote based on sentiments, adding that he made to the office of the governor based on upright manifestos of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN). “Elections cannot be won by resulting to derogatory language, by claiming luck,” he said. “Elections require those who seek elective office to focus on the people over whom they plan to exercise authority and to communicate to them in a very clear and practical manner how you intend to improve their lot.

 Look, I think that the PDP led federal government has a lot of questions to answer in Lagos and it is interesting that these remarks are being made from outside Lagos. So I hope that when they come here, they will be able to call us rascals again; and if we are rascals, it means that some of the other governors he has been presiding over is a republic of rascals.”

Comparing the achievements of the ACN with those of the PDP in the state, the governor said that the later failed in the delivery of the dividends of democracy. “They spent ten years trying to build a 400m bridge in Otta; and on the day that they finally came to open that bridge, instead of apologizing to Lagosians, they were fighting themselves about who was to cut the tape,” he said. “Meanwhile the road that leads to the bridge is not finished. We built Okota link bridge in 18months and it is longer than that bridge over which they were fighting. So that is what we expect them to come and talk about. Apapa-Oshodi-Oworonshoki Expressway is their road and it is pothole ridden, the road to the biggest airport in this country. This is a national embarrassment.”

Ribadu reacts Also reacting to the Mr Jonathan’s comments, the Nuhu Ribadu Campaign Organisation described the statements as “unbecoming of a president” and “one that smacks of desperation.” In a statement signed by Ibrahim Modibbo, the Director of Media and Communications, the organisation said that Mr Jonathan had “finally shown Nigerians how desperate he is to remain in power by resorting to name calling and character assassination instead of addressing issues that bother on the welfare of Nigerians and the people of the south west in particular.”

 “We recognise the president’s dilemma,” the statement said. “Of course he knows that both he and his fellow PDP governors in the south west have no achievements to brandish. They have no alternative to proffer to the positive changes being witnessed by the people in Lagos, Ekiti and Osun. It is however unbecoming of the president that in his frustration at the failure of him and his party to provide good governance to the people of the region and all Nigerians, he would resort to name calling.”