President Goodluck Jonathan yesterday assured Nigerians that the country would not disintegrate in 2015, as being speculated by some prophets of doom.
The president, who was full of optimism, stated that the 2015 election would be free and fair and that it would be without shedding of blood or disintegration.
Jonathan, who was at the interfaith conference at Aso Rock Villa in Abuja, with the theme: ‘The Imperative of Interfaith Understanding and Cooperation for Responsible Politics’, stated, “our challenges in the present must not be allowed to inhibit our progress.
“But I can say categorically that Nigeria will not disintegrate, we will not fail. We will surely get over our challenges and become even a stronger nation,” he added.
“As the 2015 elections draw near, the doom day sayers are out and predicting how Nigeria is going to catch fire next year. In the opinion of some of the so called experts, our ethnic and religious differences are bound to boil over.
They portray us doomed to fail,” he said. “If you spend a lot of time on the internet, the social media, you will be tempted to think along the same line with this prediction. In a country of over 170 million people, the opinion of very few is now being elevated above that of over 100 million Nigerians.
“The Nigerians I know and interact with every day are only asking for one thing in the election, to be transparent, free and fair of elections and I have promised them that.
“They want to vote and want their vote to count, they don’t want to be molested,they don’t want ballot boxes to be hijacked by criminals.
If they are convinced that the process is free, fair and credible, they have no reason to be angry. Nobody can fight against one man one vote, one woman one vote and one youth one vote,” he said. The president also promised that government will make sure that Nigerians are not killed during and after elections.
I’m surprised that some political parties are agitating that government should withdraw security during and after elections. “Having said this, I do not run away from the fact that we have challenges just like any other countries, I do not deny the fact that there is a reason for people to express fears about our future.
“Some politicians have been making reckless and irresponsible statements that are capable of stoking tension and inciting people to take laws into their hands and distablise the country.
“But we have to understand that these statements are not born out of the genuine reason of mood and temperament of Nigerians. Rather these enemies of peace are only trying to spoil the mood and create tempestuous temperature but they will fail,” he said.
