President Jonathan says despite former Pres. Obasanjo's recent
verbal attacks on his administration, he still sees him as his father
and his first Political son. GEJ said God used
people, including the former president to make him become the President
of Nigeria. President Jonathan said this in an interview with Tribune in
Lagos
"First and foremost, Obasanjo is a father to me. By divine providence
and the grace of God, I am the President of Nigeria today. It is not by
my strength. But God uses human beings to actualise His own blessings on
human beings. And He used so many Nigerians, including former President
Obasanjo, to play one role or the other for me. I became the deputy governor of a state, became the governor, the
vice president and president. I have no issues with him, and I really
don’t want to join issues with President Obasanjo.
I think it is not
necessary. But I will use this opportunity, because you asked, to just plead
with my father that he is a leader, a former president of the country.
He has led the country more than anybody, eight years of democratic
governance and almost four years of military governance. No other person
has that kind of record. The stability of this country is critical in terms of the economy of
this country. Rating agencies downgrade countries that are going into
elections because the feeling is that there would be crisis. When you
paint the colour of instability for your own nation, you are doing so
much injustice to the country because it affects the economy of the
country, not just affecting the country in terms of security and social
issues alone. It affects the economy directly. So, I plead with very
senior citizens that Nigeria is dear to us; we don’t have any other
country than Nigeria. So, actions and inactions, or utterances, should be guarded so that
we don’t expose our country to the international community as if it is a
country in danger, a country that is about to collapse. You are
frightening investors, especially those who invest hot cash, to pull out
their money from the country and that would affect the stock market and
it would affect the economy. For one reason or the other, Obasanjo may disagree with me as his
first political son. You can even disagree with your own biological
children, as a human being, not to talk of disagreeing with your
political children. So, he can agree or disagree with me, but the
utterances have to be managed in a way that it does not affect the
economy and security of this country"he said.
On how he felt watching Chief Obasanjo destroy his PDP membership card on the
television, Jonathan said the incident had no effect on him because
the attacks had been consistent.
