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
