Speaking during a special New Year service at the Dunamis International
Gospel Centre, in Abuja yesterday January 1st, President Jonathan
said his administration is coming up with plans and programmes to fight
corruption in Nigeria. What he said below...
"There are two main problems confronting
us as a nation: The issue of insecurity in the North where we have the
Boko Haram terrorists and in the South where we have commercial
kidnapping. The next thing that people worry about after security is the
issue of corruption.We are coming out with programmes and
plans to clean up. These are things that you don’t just use a magical
wand to wave off, otherwise even before I became the President, there
wouldn’t have been corruption in Nigeria.
“It is not just about shouting corruption. It is not about looking at
one person, arrest the person and show him on television. It is about
strengthening institutions
and coming up with credible plans to make sure that anybody who gets
involved with corruption, the system must have a way of detecting him
and punishing him.
“Until you put such a system on ground, you cannot talk about
eradicating corruption, you will just be celebrating corruption. You
would have
noticed that from Christmas to New Year, at least, it has been calm. It
did not happen by accident.
“It happened because you have been
praying for this country and the government has also been doing
something. We do not need to announce what we are doing. With your
prayers, we will surely get there. We will continue to come up with
programmes that will help the ordinary people.
“The same way we won the war against Ebola, we shall win the terror war. 2015 is a turning point
because of the elections. Some people will not mind if half of the
country get burnt because of their ambition.
“I always say that we must have a country first, we must have a people
first before talking about ambition. We must pray that God should give
us
the wisdom to do things with some decorum and we should not compromise
the lives of the people for ambition.
“I always say that my ambition and the
ambition of any politician for that matter, is not worth the blood of
the smallest Nigerian.”
“For you to achieve anything, you must
have a clear vision. Even if you look at what we have been doing as a
nation, you will really see that before this time when the country used
to have this 25 years plan, the budget was based on 25 years clear plan
for the country. So you know where you are going for 25 years.
“Then it was broken down into five years plan and annual budget and we
knew where we were going. But after some time, things collapsed and we
run government on emergency basis and you see government start wobbling.
“We are going back to those good days
when we had vision. We have plan for agriculture, we have plan for
industry, we have plan for automobile and many other areas. If you have a vision, any proposal that
comes in, no matter how good they are, must fall into your vision for
it to go through. With your prayers, surely as a nation, we will get to
where our vision will take us to.
“Having passed through school and being
in government for quite some time, I have realised that for you to
achieve anything, you must have a clear vision. If you have a clear
vision, even if you don’t get the exact target, you will get something
close to the target."
Source: Punch
