{"id":2866,"date":"2014-11-06T09:28:15","date_gmt":"2014-11-06T09:28:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/?p=2866"},"modified":"2014-11-06T09:28:15","modified_gmt":"2014-11-06T09:28:15","slug":"jonathans-visit-to-bfaso-sparks-outrage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/?p=2866","title":{"rendered":"Jonathan\u2019s visit to B\u2019Faso sparks outrage"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"jonathan\"<\/a><\/p>\n

President Goodluck Jonathan\u2019s one-day visit to Burkina Faso was severely criticised on Wednesday by Nigerians who felt it was misplaced and illogical.<\/p>\n

The President, in company with a few other African leaders, had gone to settle the political crisis rocking the West African nation. But many Nigerians kicked against the trip, arguing that he should have put an end to the ongoing carnage in the Northeastern states before accepting to mediate in another country\u2019s domestic problem.<\/p>\n

Although the Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to the President, Dr. Reuben Abati, had earlier explained that Jonathan\u2019s mission to Burkina Faso was imperative, having been nominated by the Economic Community of West African States, his words seemed to have fallen on deaf ears.<\/p>\n

The outrage became louder when Abati posted on Twitter, pictures of the President\u2019s visit and interactive session with Burkina Faso\u2019s interim Head of State, Lt.-Col. Isaac Zida.<\/p>\n

Reacting to the visit, an online commentator, Esther Akin-Martins, lambasted Jonathan for failing to set his priorities right.<\/p>\n

Akin-Martins said it was illogical for Jonathan to meddle in the affairs of another nation instead of quenching the fire burning in his home.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis house is burning, yet he is mediating in another country\u2019s political turmoil. He has failed to even step his feet on Chibok but he believes that the best thing he could do at this critical time is to poke-nose in Burkina Faso\u2019s crisis,\u201d she said, in a statement posted on Twitter.<\/p>\n

Also, Abuja-based Eric Mallim urged the President to stop pulling a deceptive front by acting as if all was well at home, despite the fact that things were getting worse.<\/p>\n

Mallim challenged Jonathan on Twitter to prove to right thinking Nigerians that his decision to travel to Ouagadougou is a brilliant one.<\/p>\n

He argued that the continued killings on daily basis in Borno, Yobe, Adamawa and Gombe states must not be viewed by the President as mere setbacks in the ongoing war against terrorism.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour house is on fire but you chose to abandon it in order to help put out the smoke in your neighbours\u2019 house, while your children perish. Is that a brilliant move?\u201d Mallim asked.<\/p>\n

In his reaction, online activist, Sada Abubakar, described Jonathan\u2019s action as insensitive, inhuman and incompetent, while urging him to remove the speck in his eyes before attempting to remove the log in someone else\u2019s.<\/p>\n

\u201cBoko Haram is ravaging a whole geo-political zone in the country and our President doesn\u2019t give a damn,\u201d he tweeted.<\/p>\n

But, dismissing the outbursts, the Presidency said the business of governance and international relations should not come to a halt just because of the activities of insurgents.<\/p>\n

Senior Special Assistant to the President on Public Affairs, Dr. Doyin Okupe, argued that only 16 out of 774 local government areas were currently affected by the insurgency.<\/p>\n

Noting that the figure, by his calculation, amounted to only 0.02 per cent of the country\u2019s territorial space, Okupe asked the President\u2019s critics if anyone of them had refused to eat breakfast because of the insurgency ravaging the north east.<\/p>\n

\u201cTerrorists will not dictate to us how to run our lives. Have the pretenders criticising Jonathan not had breakfast in view of the insurgency? Life and government activities must go on in spite of terror. We shall remain unbowed. No matter what, we shall win in Jesus name. Evil will never triumph in our land,\u201d Okupe argued on Twitter.<\/p>\n

Insisting that the present government was not prepared for the insurgency, he said that President Jonathan was trying everything within his power to contain the menace posed by Boko Haram.<\/p>\n

Okupe went on to place a \u2018curse\u2019 on those he claimed were accusing Jonathan of not showing enough commitment to the prosecution of the current war against terrorism in the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow can you prepare for a war of this scale before you enter government? Are you people for real? Now all that is happening is about crass opportunism. Sometimes it appears that many of you defenders of the opposition suffer from \u2018cerebral arrest.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you say the government is not fighting at all, may the God of the widows and fatherless children of our fallen heroes judge you,\u201d he wrote on his Twitter page.<\/p>\n

Source: The\u00a0 Punch<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Goodluck Jonathan\u2019s one-day visit to Burkina Faso was severely criticised on Wednesday by Nigerians who felt it was misplaced and illogical. The President, in company with a few other African leaders, had gone to settle the political crisis rocking the West African nation. But many Nigerians kicked against the trip, arguing that he should […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2867,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/jonathan.jpg","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4oswh-Ke","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2866"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2866\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2868,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2866\/revisions\/2868"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}