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The outgoing federal
executive council (Image source: The Nation)
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President Goodluck
Jonathan has said that the incoming administration is free to investigate the
past activities of government but restricting such exercise to his
administration would amount to injustice.
Speaking on Wednesday
during the valedictory session of the federal executive council, the outgoing
president said a lot of things need to be investigated in the country.
“Some people are even
calling for the probe of this government, I agree in Nigeria there are a number
of things that we will probe. Very many things,” he said.
TheCable reports:
“I believe that anybody
calling for probe must ensure that these probes are extended beyond the
Jonathan administration otherwise to me it will be witch-hunting. If you are
very sincere, then it is not just the Jonathan’s administration that should be
probed.
“Even debts owed by
states and this nation from 1960 up to this time, they say it is Jonathan’s
administration that is owing all the debt.
“A number of things
have gone wrong and we have done our best to fix them. The attorney-general is
aware of massive judgments debts, if we aggregate all of them, it is almost
going to US$1 billion.
“How did we come to
this kind of huge judgment debts? These issues should be probed. How do you
allocate our oil wells, oil fields, marginal wells and all that do we follow
our laws? All these should be probed. And I believe all these and many more
areas should be looked at.”
He expressed
appreciation to all those who have worked with him, singling out those who were
with him till the end. He commended all of them for their efforts but
noted that some of them were fond of flattering him.
“First and foremost, we
have to thank God that we are here talking to ourselves, reassessing the
relationship between and what we have done. Others probably don’t have that
kind of luck,” he said.
“I recall that I have
devolved quite a number of cabinets and the ministers don’t even know when
they are to leave; they will just hear the announcements. At least we have the
opportunity, we know we are to leave government on the May 29th.
“For the past five
years, for those of you like the attorney-general that has been with us from
the beginning and those who joined lately, we have worked together and to me it
was quite fulfilling.
“We had many challenges
no doubt about that but with God on our sides we have been able to navigate up
to this point.
“As ministers you came
in at different times, the likes of Aganga are the oldest-serving ministers;
others are just few weeks old, they came almost at the time of the elections.
“One thing that is
clear, I enjoyed working with all of you. I’m very pleased with all of you. I
want to thank all of you for your various contributions to the development of
our country. I want to thank those that have been with us, the advisers,
special senior assistants, the secretariat, other senior government
functionaries, including the media that covered proceedings every Wednesday.
“Let me also thank you
for your various positive comments and encomiums, though I think you exaggerate
some of them but it is always expected.”
Jonathan listed his
achievements and challenged his critics to compare his administration to those
of the past.
He said there were
deliberate efforts to sabotage his government, making reference to strike
action of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and the recent fuel
scarcity across the country.
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