The greatest achievement of President Goodluck Jonathan is providing an enabling environment for conducting free and fair elections to be held in a manner that has largely been accepted as reflecting the popular will if the people.
A governorship aspirant on the platform of the Peoples’ Democratic Party, PDP, in Rivers State, Nimi Walson-Jack, who made this assertion, in Port Harcourt, yesterday, maintained that creating an atmosphere for free and credible elections remains “President Jonathan’s greatest legacy for which Nigerians will always remember him”.
He stated: “The spirit of democracy unleashes human potential and ability, which no other system of governance to date has been able to match. True advancement is built on freedom of choice. This to my mind is where President Jonathan stands head and shoulders above every Nigerian leader since our return to the democratic experiment in May 1999”.
“Until recently, the experience of Nigerians with the electoral process had been agonizing. However, since 2011, the President Jonathan’s administration has made conscious effort to conduct free, fair and credible elections where votes count and the will of the electorate is decided by the ballot not by judges in election tribunals”.
He stressed: “Security organizations have put political thugs out of business. The snatching and stuffing of ballot boxes is no longer fashionable. The counting of ballots at polling units and collation of results in the full view television audience has put paid to the manipulations associated with announcement of results”.
“In the last two years elections have been held in Ondo, Edo, Ekiti and Osun States. In all these elections, that the Peoples’ Democratic Party, PDP, won only one of the states just mentioned, going into an election year in 2015, says it all for our president’s credentials in creating a level playing field for the entrenchment of the democratic ideal”.
Walson-Jack explained that “President Jonathan is providing us with good lessons for the benefit of the ruling party sends an important message – that politics need not, indeed must not, be zero-sum game. The idea that “winner takes all” has no placed in a democracy, because if losers lose all, they will opt out of the democratic game. Equitable distribution of resources, of responsibilities, the zoning and rotation of elective public offices, is essential in a democratic society”.
Walson-Jack, who spoke at a “Prayer Rally for Nigeria and Jonathan”, maintained that “the second importance I his administration is the sustenance of democracy”. He pointed out: “It is has been 15 years since the return to civil rule in a constitutional democracy. The journey had been challenging. Jonathan’s administration is laying the foundation for a democratic society from the ruins of the past”.
The “Prayer Rally’ which was held under the aegis of Walson-Jack’s campaign organisatio, “Rivers Converge” was attended by about 2,000, people and scores of clergymen who prayed for Nigeria, President Jonathan, the host, Walson-Jack, as well as the different arms of government in Rivers State. Special prayers were also conducted for a peaceful outcome of the 2015 general elections.
