{"id":3998,"date":"2015-01-10T10:58:28","date_gmt":"2015-01-10T10:58:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/?p=3998"},"modified":"2015-01-10T10:58:28","modified_gmt":"2015-01-10T10:58:28","slug":"buhari-cant-remember-his-phone-number-jonathan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/?p=3998","title":{"rendered":"Buhari can\u2019t remember his phone number \u2013Jonathan"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"President-Goodluck-Jonathan1-360x225\"<\/a><\/p>\n

President Goodluck Jonathan on Friday during a rally in Enugu said that the All Progressives Congress candidate, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd), cannot remember his own mobile phone number.<\/p>\n

Jonathan, whose unscripted address was mostly a response to previous statements made by Buhari, accused the APC presidential candidate of deceiving Nigerians by promising to revive the economy without explaining how he would achieve the feat.<\/p>\n

The President wondered how Buhari would develop the country\u2019s economy, a feat he could not achieve while he was in office as head of state between 1983 and 1985.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs it now that Buhari cannot even remember his own phone number that he can change the economy of the country.\u201d Jonathan asked.<\/p>\n

The Peoples Democratic Party presidential candidate said that although he did not like to \u201cgo personal during campaigns,\u201d \u201csometimes circumstances demand that certain things must be said.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jonathan said that Buhari belonged to the medieval age, adding that he (the APC candidate) intended to run the Federal Government as a medieval king.<\/p>\n

He said, \u201cWe cannot run the government as if we are in the medieval age; we cannot run a government where somebody said he would throw people into jail.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou are not a medieval king \u2013 a medieval king can throw you into jail but we have to follow the rule of law because we cannot go back to the old days.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jonathan, however, read the speech made by Gen. Ibrahim Babangida (rtd.) after overthrowing Buhari\u2019s regime through a military coup on August 27, 1985 to justify his claim that the APC candidate does not keep his promises.<\/p>\n

Babangida, in the portions of the address read by Jonathan, justified Buhari\u2019s overthrow by pointing out that the latter did not live up to the promises he made to Nigerians when he ousted a democratically elected civilian government headed by Alhaji Shehu Shagari in a military coup.<\/p>\n

Noting that Buhari \u201cdeceived Nigerians\u201d from 1983 to 1985, Jonathan quoted Babangida as saying, \u201cThe initial objectives of Buhari\u2019s intervention were betrayed as there was a general deterioration of standard of living in the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

The PDP candidate also pointed out that Babangida accused Buhari of being \u201ctoo rigid in his attitude to national issues\u201d and \u201cbecame alienated from the people\u201d in the course of his stay in power.<\/p>\n

He, therefore, challenged Buhari to tell Nigerians how he intends to revive the economy.<\/p>\n

Jonathan said, \u201cThey are telling young Nigerians that they are going to change the economy but they have not told us how they want to manage the economy more than us.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf they say they want to change agriculture, they should tell us the weak links in the agriculture value chain and what they want to do about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI said in Lagos that I want to work with young people, not to deceive people.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am not going to run the government based on my habits, I am going to run the government according to global best practices.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jonathan also insisted that he was committed to the campaign against corruption.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no government that has fought corruption more than we do,\u201d he said, noting that some previous administrations pretended to be fighting corruption while oppressing their enemies.<\/p>\n

He recalled that Buhari jailed some prominent Igbo politicians while in office as head of state, including former Vice-President Alex Ekwueme and former governor of old Anambra State, Chief Jim Nwobodo.<\/p>\n

Stressing that Buhari jailed politicians on trumped up charges, Jonathan said, \u201cYou can no longer carry people and put them in prison for 301 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

The President equally accused Buhari of having a wrong idea of corruption.<\/p>\n

According to him, Buhari believes that every wealthy Nigerian is corrupt.<\/p>\n

He said, \u201cIf a Nigerian businessman has a private jet, then you are corrupt but if a South African has a private jet then you commend him.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you have a good house, then you are corrupt, if you have a good car then you are corrupt \u2013 that is his definition of corruption.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jonathan accused his opponent of making spurious claims against him.<\/p>\n

The President said, \u201cThey are saying that government is corrupt but they are not telling us what they are going to do to stop corruption. Let them go back to their consultants to coach them, then I will listen to them.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey should tell us how they are going to manage the economy better than we do.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are saying we stole foreign reserves, nobody can steal foreign reserves \u2013 spurious allegations.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also reiterated his claim that Buhari did not equip the military while he was the head of state.<\/p>\n

Jonathan said that he had done more than his predecessors to shore up the country\u2019s defence.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor 30 years, we had only one frigate, now we have four additional frigates,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In the same vein, he pointed out that Buhari did not find any woman worthy enough for appointment when he was the military head of state.<\/p>\n

The President asked Nigerians to assess him and Buhari by looking at how they performed during their respective periods in office.<\/p>\n

He said, \u201cThey have deceived us before and they want to deceive us again.<\/p>\n

\u201cGo and find out whether these people are deceiving you or are telling you the truth.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are assessing me because I have run this country for some years \u2013 they have run this country for two years.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey came with promises but immediately they came in, what they did was to jail Jim Nwobodo for 201 years.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Goodluck Jonathan on Friday during a rally in Enugu said that the All Progressives Congress candidate, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd), cannot remember his own mobile phone number. Jonathan, whose unscripted address was mostly a response to previous statements made by Buhari, accused the APC presidential candidate of deceiving Nigerians by promising to revive the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3979,"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-3998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/President-Goodluck-Jonathan1-360x2254.jpg","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4oswh-12u","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3998","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=3998"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3998\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4000,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3998\/revisions\/4000"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}