TheCable

Amid complaints about the presence of heavy security during recent governorship elections, President Goodluck Jonathan has insisted that it will not be stepped down for future polls.

Nigeria will hold its general election in February 2015, when the president, parliamentarians and governors will be elected.

Declaring open a two-day conference organised by the Interfaith Initiative for Peace in Abuja on Monday, Jonathan his government “will make sure that Nigerians are not killed during and after elections”.‎

He said he was surprised that some political parties were agitating  that government should withdraw security elections.

“What surprised me most is that even some labour leaders are agitating that government should not secure people during elections. And I wonder how short‎ human memories are.

“We know what happened in Bauchi in 2011: about 10 youth corpers were slaughtered in that election. We know what happened in Kano, property worth millions of naira destroyed, some of the people have not gotten back their houses. We know what happened in Akwa Ibom where some criminals even had to severe the genitals of some men in the name of politics, demons who want to hold political office.

“In that kind of situation, how would a person who called himself a labour leader come out publicly to say government should not secure people?  I don’t agree with them. My promise of free and fair elections is clear,” he said.

The president did not name the labour leader, but the president of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Comrade Abdulwaheed Omar, criticised the deployment of security ahead of the Osun election on Saturday.

Jonathan said contrary to insinuations, he has not used the security agencies to tilt elections in favour of his party, the PDP.

He said: “All governorship elections that have been conducted so far, you will agree with me that they have been free and fair. I am from the PDP, the ruling party, but I don’t use that strength to make sure that PDP must win always.

“PDP has lost election in Edo State, we lost election in Anambra State, we lost election in Ondo State and, of course, only two days back, we have lost election in Osun State.

“But we have said that this country must change, ‎the kind of elections‎ that we had in the 60s that led to the crisis in the western region that threatened the sovereignty of this country cannot come up again.

“The kind of elections we had during the second republic that some people won elections as governors and ran away from the states that they claimed elected them cannot come up again. Nigerians must vote and our votes must count.

“‎If I was interested in manipulating elections, my party will not be losing all these governorship elections. All what we want is credible election.”

He also said those who think Nigeria “will catch fire” in 2015 are wrong.

“Despite the fact that we have survived a civil war and continue to evolve as one nation with one destiny, we have among ourselves those who continue to define us and put it that we as Nigerians cannot live together.

“As the 2015 elections draw near, the doom’s day sayers are out and predicting how Nigeria is going to catch fire next year.‎ In the opinion of some so-called experts, our ethnic and religious differences are bound to boil over. They portray us as doomed to fail.

“But I can say categorically that‎ Nigeria will not disintegrate, we will not fail. We will surely get over our challenges and become even a stronger nation.

“If you spend a lot of time on the Internet, the social media, you will be tempted to think along the same line. In a country of over 170 million people, the opinion of  very few is now being elevated above that of over 100 million Nigerians.”

He used the occasion to restate his belief that Nigerians will continue to “stand together”.

“The Nigerians I know and interact with every day are only asking for one thing in the election: transparency, free and fair, and I have promised them.

“They want to vote and want their vote to count, they don’t want to be molested, they don’t want ballot boxes to be hijacked by criminals. If they are convinced that the process is free, fair and credible, they have no reason to be angry. Nobody can fight against one man one vote, one woman, one vote and one youth, one vote,” he said.

Speaker of the House of Representatives, Alhaji Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, in his goodwill message, said because Nigeria was a complex society, any step to address its complexity is a welcome development.

The sultan of Sokoto and co-convener, Alhaji Sa’ad Abubakar III, said the conference was one of the steps being taken to restore peace to parts of the country, especially in the nort-east.

On the 2015 elections, he said people must be allowed to elect who will govern them.

Catholic Archbishop of Abuja, Cardinal John Onaiyekan, who is a co-convener, said “demonisation of politics” is one of the tragedies of the present-day Nigeria.

This, he said, was manifest in the oppression, corruption and do-or-die attitudes of the political class.

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