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President Goodluck Jonathan
with Yoruba Council of Elders Council members
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President
Goodluck Jonathan on Thursday promised that Boko Haram would be incapacitated
in the next three weeks and the rescheduled elections will hold. He was speaking when he received the Yoruba Council of Elders Council
(YCE) at the State House, Marina, Lagos.
There has to be a country before any
one nurses aspiration to be in government, he said.
“No matter what we want to do, that
is those of us who are aspiring to run this country or even at the state level,
first and foremost, you must have a country,” he said, according to Agency Report.
“If we don’t have a country, there
will be no office to hold; whether it is the office of the President or office
of the Vice President or office of the minister or whatever office, there must
be Nigeria first. My position is that let us all collectively defend and
protect this country and that is why I always feel bad when people make
statements that expose Nigeria as if it is the worst country on earth. We are
not that bad. Yes, we have issues in this country. Even issues of security,
like this Boko Haram, because we are managing a very delicate situation. Sometimes
people define Nigeria by the Boko Haram. Nigeria cannot be defined based on
Boko Haram alone. There is terror all over the world. We have unfair share of
the terror. But luckily with what is happening now, I tell people that in the
next two to three weeks, this story will change. Because we have got the
equipment that we can withstand the excesses of the Boko Haram.
“That is why these few days, you
will see that the movement, we don’t want to say much, is going on gradually.
“My belief is that in the next three
weeks or so if we don’t completely take over all our territories, we would have
handled the Boko Haram to the extent that it will no longer be a problem to the
elections that will come up.”
Jonathan said his administration had
put measures in place to improve the lots of Nigerians and make the future
brighter.
He said that in spite of the
challenges in the country, food prices had remained stable while the health
sector received a great boost.
Jonathan said that the
administration had eradicated polio and that WHO would declare the country
polio free by the end of the year.
He said the administration showed
leadership by pulling all the states together to battle the Ebola virus disease
outbreak.
The president said that his
administration would carry the people along in all its programmes and would
commence a quarterly meeting with the six geo-political zones, if re-elected to
further move the grassroots forward.
Jonathan thanked the YCE for their
support to his administration and urged them to stand by him during the
election.
“We have not reached where we want
but we have gone far,” he said.
Earlier, the president of YCE,
Adeyinka Adebayo, a retired general, had commended the Jonathan’s
administration for offering good leadership to the country.
“Your Excellency, our great
president, we don’t need to waste any time today. We have introduced ourselves
to you. We know you very well and we know the elders on the high table. We are
pleased that we are here today to see you face to face and to thank God for
what you are doing for the country and we hope all will be well for the
country. We do not need to talk too much. Our clock is going on. We want to
talk about what we want for the country and the future. What we want is good
leadership with peace and love for the generation of our great country and for
good leadership for a great country in future.”
The YCE is made up of men above 60
years and women above 50 years from the Yoruba race and cuts across religious,
professional and political divides.
Another pan-Yoruba group, Afenifere, endorsed
Jonathan for re-election but the rival Afenifere Renewal Group dissociated
itself from it.
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