Strike: Jonathan apologises to Int’l community •Says his govt can’t be toppled

Posted by admin Goodluck Jonathan (2010-present), Presidency Tuesday, January 17th, 2012

President Goodluck Jonathan yesterday apologised to the international community over the six-day strike called by the organised labour and its civil society allies over removal of fuel subsidy.

He has also said nobody could topple a democratically elected government. He said only leaders who imposed themselves on people would experience turbulence.
He has further assured that henceforth, government would no longer carry out deregulation in a way that would affect Nigerians adversely.

Speaking during the annual diplomatic dinner at the Banquet Hall of the Presidential Villa, Abuja, he assured that despite the protests that trailed the removal of subsidy, it was done with the best intentions to manage the nation’s oil resources to the benefit of the Nigerian people.

He said the civil protests had gone a long way in strengthening the resolve of his administration to make Nigeria a better society. He further assured the diplomatic community of his administration’s determination to tackle the emerging security challenges facing the country.

President Jonathan thanked the international community for the goodwill messages during the nation’s trying times and also during the New Year and Christmas celebrations and reassured them of his government’s readiness to safeguard lives and property of both citizens and foreign nationals resident in Nigeria.
He thanked them for their roles during last year’s general elections, stressing that the government was committed to strengthening genuine democracy in the country by 2015.

“Let me also use this opportunity to express my appreciation and that of the government and good people of Nigeria for the goodwill messages your organisations and governments sent to me, my government and my country.
“Because of the ugly incident of Boko Haram even the UN secretariat was bombed. Your organisations and the head of governments sent letters of commiserations to me. Let me again express my appreciation to them. Let me assure all of you that Nigeria will continue to maintain a very warm relationship with all the organisation and all the countries in spite of our experiences with the Boko Haram.

“Nigerian government is totally committed to the maintenance of peace and order in line with the UN Charter.
“We believe that all citizens of the world should live freely and peacefully wherever they find themselves. We will work with you and all your countries and organisations to make sure that the world is a place where all of us will live without fear or favour.

“This is a challenging period all over the world. We have crisis here and there; if you look at the international media you will begin to think about history and you begin to ask yourself, ‘when will the world be in peace.’ But collectively, we will work towards that.

“Let me thank you for the role you played in our elections and assure that democracy has not just come to stay in Nigeria but democracy that is sanctioned by an election that is credible, election that is free and fair. And using our own slogan, election that the votes of Nigerians must count, where we say one man, one vote, one woman, one vote and one youth, one vote.

“We believe that democracy that is not dictated by the vote of the people is not a good democracy. Until the vote of the people count that is when we can say this is a democracy. And I believe also that is difficult for you to topple such a democracy because it is the people that elect those that are ruling. But if people impose themselves on ordinary people, of course, such a democracy may not be able to stand on a solid ground; with a little turbulence such a government will fall.
“In Nigeria we are totally committed to democracy and enduring democratic culture that the votes of individuals will count.”

“At the end of our elections in April, we did promise the whole world
that our subsequent elections will even be better and promising. But
as we march towards 2015 for another round of elections, that the
elections will be conducted better than the elections in 2011.

“Let me again thank you for your various role and assure you that as
we move into the new year even though we started the year with some
kind of protest, I regret the inconveniences some of you passed
through because of the government attempt to look at the way we look
at our oil industry by adjusting the pump price and the issue of
deregulating the oil sector that led to demonstrations by labour and
civil societies. I believed some of you suffered some inconvenience
because you couldn’t go out for a week, you couldn’t visit people you
would have loved to visit.

“I can assure you that it has even made us stronger and indeed better.
We promise that we will continue to grow from strength to strength and
the incident of last week, we have put them behind us and we are
moving forward. We will not experience that kind of situation again.
We will make sure we work hard to ensure we will not experience that
again. We appreciation your understanding. I know some people must
have come to you and send all kinds of messages to your various
governments. I believe that you know that the position of the
government is the best for the people.

“Government will ensure that while adjusting the pump price, we will
not do it in a way that will bring suffering to the people. We know we
were misunderstood, prices couldn’t have gone up that way but that is
a human society and is a human factor”.

After the brief remarks the President proposed a toast to the
continues cordial relationship between Nigeria and the international
community.

n an earlier remark, the Dean of the Diplomatic corp and Ambassador
of Burkina Faso, Yamego Dramane, thanked President Jonathan for
organising the cocktail.
He expressed the support of the diplomatic community to leadership of
President Jonathan saying that “We stand behind you and Nigeria in the
fight against terrorism”.
He equally expressed support of the diplomatic community for the
President’s move to tackle terrorism and corruption, especially in the
oil and gas sector declared their determination to continue to work
for the unity of Nigeria.
While recalling the strategic roles of Nigeria in the subregion, he
urged Jonathan to continue to do more for the unity and economic
development of the subregion.
He called for accountability and transpirancy in the oil sector.

-Sun

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