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
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