Goodluck Jonathan says the narrative that he was a “clueless” and “inept” Nigerian leader from 2010 to 2015, is a completely flawed one.
The tag “clueless”, stuck to Jonathan like a second skin throughout his reign. Now, the former president is pushing back on that sobriquet.
Jonathan has been telling his story in a book he launched on Tuesday, November 20, 2018.
“No one can factually say we were ‘clueless’ or inept. The evidence of performance is simply overwhelming. We gave Nigeria an impressive and steady GDP growth rate at 6.7 per annum”, Jonathan wrote.
The governing All Progressives Congress (APC) often cites the inheritance of an empty treasury from Jonathan, as one reason why it has under-performed on the job thus far.
Time and again, President Buhari who succeeded Jonathan, has pointed at the slump in the price of oil and the refusal of the Jonathan administration to save for a rainy day, as factors that led Nigeria into a recession soon after he assumed the reins.
But Jonathan says the APC is simply a victim of its own propaganda machine.
“Recall that the opposition and their sympathizers and campaigners, both local and international, with their malicious propaganda, tore our economy to shreds, threatened our stability and existence as a nation and intimidated our citizens, all in the bid to take over power,” he wrote.
“Rather than forge a coalition and build on the momentum we had gathered when they eventually took office, they went on a persecution spree and vengeance mission. That the country slipped into recession soon after we left office was a self-inflicted injury caused by misplaced priorities. The narrative of inheriting empty treasury is a blatant lie.
“Also, the excuse of the collapse of world crude prices does not hold water. This is because the Fourth Republic took off in 1999 with crude oil selling for less than $20 per barrel and a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth at 0.58 per cent, according to National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) figures. Yet, the economy maintained a steady growth from that year, peaking at 15.33 per cent in 2002 when the average crude oil price was about $25.
“It is also instructive that the oil and gas sector constitute about 11 per cent of our GDP. There had to be a wider causative factor than just the fall in world crude prices.
“It also amounts to standing facts on their heads to continuously claim that recession was caused by so-called mindless looting. The truth is that the opposition, in a bid to undo our government, became its own undoing when it got to power, because of the burden of justifying deliberate misrepresentations.
“There is wisdom in the saying that if you win a prize and get the crown, don’t go around destroying the person who previously held that prize; it will lose its value.
“Even after winning the election and forming the government at the centre, the blame game continued. When two brothers fight to death, it is the neighbour that inherits their father’s wealth. And we have seen neigbouring nations like the Republic of Benin and Ghana reaping from the capital flight out of Nigeria”, he added.
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