Jonathan planning to arrest me –Buhari

Posted by admin Goodluck Jonathan (2010-present), Muhammadu Buhari (1983-85, 2015 - 2023), Presidency Thursday, May 17th, 2012

Thursday, May 17, 2012

Buhari
Photo: Sun News Publishing
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There appears to be no letup in the face-off between former Head of State, Muhammadu Buhari and the Presidency as the former alleged that President Goodluck Jonathan and the Federal Government were planning to arrest him.

Buhari made the allegation in an interview his political associate and national secretary of the Congress for Political Change (CPC), Buba Galadima had with Premium Times, stressing that the Presidency and the ruling party were already preparing the ground to harass, arrest and incarcerate him.

“They are just trying to give us a bad name in order to hang us,” Mr. Galadima said in a telephone interview. “We know that they are already planning to arrest the General and I, they are just preparing grounds for their actions.”
Buhari was reacting to statements issued by the Presidency and the national headquarters of the Peoples Democratic Party, describing him as a serial election loser and blood-thirsty politician, who is in the habit of inciting his supporters to violence.

But speaking after the statements were released, Buhari said rather than him, it was the PDP and the Jonathan-led Federal Government that were the real threat to peace in the country.
“It is those who organise the rigging of elections that are trying to disrupt the peace, not Buhari,” the former head of state said, through Galadima.

Galadima also said the PDP and the presidency only came up with the allegations because the government “is planning to arrest Buhari and I, and so they are using Monday’s remarks as an excuse.” He stressed, “It is not General that is threatening peace, rather it is the action of the PDP that is leading to bloodbath, they have infected us with bloodbath.”

Meanwhile, in another reaction, the CPC has said that President Jonathan has portrayed himself as a sectional leader with the affinity for appointments made in the public sector in the two years he had been in the saddle. In a press statement signed by his National Publicity Secretary Secretary, Rotimi Fashakin the party said Presidential spokesman, Reuben Abati had wrongly characterized Buhari as a sectional leader, a description, he claimed best fitted Jonathan.

“First, Gen Buhari has been out of office as Head of Government for about 28 years, yet his relevance to the Nigerian nation is something firmly acknowledged by a broad spectrum of Nigerians, including his adversaries. As Head of State, his Oil Minister was Professor Tam David-West, a Kalabari man in Rivers state. As a Leader, he created the ambience for his ministers to work unobtrusively and devoid of executive meddlesomeness. But what do we find with Dr Goodluck Jonathan? All the appointees as Oil ministers in his two-year reign thus far as President of Nigeria have been Nigerians of Ijaw extraction, like himself!

“Second, in October 1, 2010, there was a bomb blast during the year’s independence anniversary celebrations, with attendant deaths of many Nigerians. Without waiting for any preliminary report from the Security Agencies, Dr Goodluck Jonathan, as President, told a traumatized Nation, “it is not MEND!” Meanwhile, MEND is the name for the militant group from Dr Good-luck Jonathan’s ethnic extraction that had in the immediate past waged relentless and potent insurgency against the Nigerian state but had been placated with more slice of the Nation’s resources ceded to the region. Indeed, MEND impugned the President’s statement and admitted responsibility.

“Third, so far as President of Nigeria, Dr Good-luck Jonathan has shown very generous affinity for Nigerians of Ijaw stock in terms of appointments and promotions in the Federal Public sector. There is a marked lopsidedness that smacks of clannishness and ethnocentrism by the President!”wp_posts