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<\/p>\nJonathan said that there was a comprehensive plot to discredit his book, \u2018My Transition Hours\u2019, launched in Abuja on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The Bayelsa-born politician said the diatribes aimed at the book since its launch by Shettima and the Muhammadu Buhari presidency, is proof of the calculated plot to discredit his effort and hard work.<\/p>\n
Jonathan said this in a statement signed by his spokesperson, Ikechukwu Eze, and made available to reporters in Abuja on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Governor Shettima had described the book as \u201can elementary book of fiction,\u201d particularly in respect to its account on the Chibok girls saga.<\/p>\n
Also, President Buhari\u2019s Media Assistant, Garba Shehu, was quoted to have said that Jonathan\u2019s anti-corruption records, as mentioned in the book, could not be substantiated.<\/p>\n
Jonathan said, \u201cIt is obvious from the pattern of deleterious comments from certain quarters since the successful public presentation of My Transition Hour s, a book authored by Dr. Goodluck Jonathan that a comprehensive plan to discredit the book is afoot.<\/p>\n
\u201cHowever, since facts don\u2019t lie, the plot shall come to naught, just as the sustained propaganda blitzkrieg against the author and all he stands for, has failed to dampen enthusiasm and respect for his legacies.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn Wednesday Nigerians were treated to a noisy but feeble defence by Borno Governor Kashim Shettima who, only ended up showcasing a jaded ritual of chest-thumbing, rather than offer plausible explanations for the ignoble roles he played in worsening the Boko Haram tragedy in his home state.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy he (Shettima) deliberately ignored the directive of both the Federal Ministry of Education and the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) for governors to keep candidates in the affected locations out of harm\u2019s way by relocating them to safer areas for their exams.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf it was bad enough that ignoring the directive meant deliberately exposing the girls and other school children to danger, it was utterly reprehensible that when the girls eventually got kidnapped the governor refused to cooperate with the federal government during the search and rescue efforts.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe is on record to have boasted that he did not contact the President until 19 days after the abduction had taken place. One other of such clearly senseless behaviour was his ill-advised roller coaster trip to America and Europe soon after the girls were abducted; a development that pushed a bemused foreign journalist to ask him what he was doing abroad at a time his home was burning.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is puzzling that the governor continues to hide behind the cover of the report of the Presidential Committee, rather than explain his actions. He should please publish the report or any document he has that either absolved him of indiscretion or gave him credit for his actions on the Chibok School Girl\u2019s saga.<\/p>\n
\u201cGarba Shehu towed a revisionist path when he claimed that Jonathan\u2019s anti-corruption records couldn\u2019t be substantiated.<\/p>\n
\u201cHas he forgotten that facts don\u2019t lie? The only credible and globally recognized anti-corruption marker is Transparency International. Nigeria\u2019s best ranking in TI\u2019s corruption perception index still remains her placing in 2014, under President Jonathan, as the 136th out of all the countries ranked.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is far better than the last position recorded under the present government where Nigeria was ranked as number 148, a decline that took the nation 12 places backward.<\/p>\n
\u201cRather than continue to raise a false banner of piety which apparently is no longer working, this administration would have served itself and the country better by understudying the success nuggets of its predecessors.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnly then will they learn that Jonathan was able to do this through effective implementation of sound economic policies and institutional anti-corruption measures established by his administration.<\/p>\n
\u201cPart of the successful tools established by Jonathan to fight corruption included the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System, IPPIS, which weeded out 50,000 ghost federal workers and saved the country N15 billion monthly.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe institutional framework also included the establishment of such mechanisms as the treasury single account (TSA), and bank verification number (BVN), vital anti-corruption tools which are now shamelessly being appropriated by those that inherited them.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no doubt that Jonathan provided focused leadership on the economic front, through institutional and sectoral reforms which impacted positively on the fundamentals for growth.<\/p>\n
\u201cHaving sowed wisely, the Jonathan administration reaped bountifully by keeping inflation at a single digit, growing Nigeria\u2019s economy to become the largest in Africa with a GDP of over half a trillion US dollars, and becoming the number one foreign direct investment destination on the continent.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll those were achieved because there were credible and sustainable economic programmes that were quite appealing to both local investors and the global business community.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a known fact that businesses, growth and economic well-being shy away from corrupt territories. Doesn\u2019t the fact that Nigeria has regressed to become the country with the highest number of poor people on earth, with tens of millions of jobs lost in less than four years, tell us something about where we now stand as a nation on anti-corruption fight.”<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Former President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan has named the Governor of Borno State, Ibrahim Shettima as one of those who are working towards rubishing his new book. Jonathan said that there was a comprehensive plot to discredit his book, \u2018My Transition Hours\u2019, launched in Abuja on Tuesday. The Bayelsa-born politician said the diatribes aimed at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11147,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[4384,8074],"class_list":["post-64123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-politics","tag-gudluck-jonathan","tag-my-transition-hours"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=64123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64123\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}