-Former president Goodluck Jonathan speaks on the $2.1 billion arms deal
– Goodluck shares his thought on the war against Boko Haram insurgency
– He talks about his achievements while in office
Since former president Goodluck Jonathan left office in May 2015, he has been busy playing some roles behind the scene.
Last week, the former president was honoured in Geneva, Switzerland by an association of international diplomats.
Goodluck Jonathan ”I will not make any comments at this point until all these are sorted out.”
Speaking at the occassion, Jonathan shared his thoughts on the 2015 elections, arms deal probe, Boko Haram and other sundry national issues.
Naij.com complies important quotes from Jonathan’s interview in Switzerland:
$2.1 billion arms deal probe by President Buhari
1. ”When a matter is already in a court of law, the people who had one thing or another to do with the matter are not expected to make comments because such would be considered as prejudice.”
2. ”We had issues in the country. On my part, I tried build institutions. I strengthened the judiciary and that is why I wouldn’t want to go into areas that are not in line with standard judicial practice.”
3. ”I encouraged the separation of powers among the three arms of government because that is the standard practice in any true democracy.”
4. ”I reformed the electoral system by strengthening the electoral body, INEC, making it possible for it to seamlessly conduct the 2011 and 2015 elections.”
5. ”Doomsday predictions emerged from many quarters, including agencies in the United States that Nigeria would disintegrate in 2015. But still we were able to conduct a peaceful, free and fair election.”
6. ”The election was adjudged transparent, free and fair, by local and international election observers.”
Boko Haram
7. ”Boko Haram started in Nigeria about 2002. It started off initially as a religious group.”
8. ‘The first major clash that happened between the Boko Haram agents and the Nigerian military was in 2009. Then, the first leader of the sect was killed by the police.”
9. ”The country’s security architecture was not designed to combat terrorism at that time.”
10. ‘The security forces can manage armed robbers and other criminals better because the criminals are also being careful not to lose their lives.”
11. ”Given this challenge, you need a different security architecture with superior technology.”
12 ”When I became the president, we had to start by building the capacity of various security outfits in terms of intelligence monitoring and interventions to enable them develop the capacity to take pre-emptive actions. We built that capacity over time.”
13. ”I believe that with the commitment of the present government, we will be able to get to a level when Boko Haram will no longer constitute any obstruction to our social and economic life.”
Jonathan’s working relationship with President Muhammadu Buhari
14. ”I am the former president and I cannot throw myself on the new government.”
15. ”I am free to work for my country and indeed for any other African president that considers my service valuable.”
His administration’s alleged negotiation with Boko Haram
16. ‘‘We did not negotiate with Boko Haram. People will come to you with all kinds of names. But my government never set up a team to negotiate with Boko Haram.”
17. ”Activities of the terrorists were coming from a section of the country, the North East, and they were more active in two states, Borno and Yobe.”
18. ”If you relate this with the issue of education, you will discover that these two states have the worst cases in terms of children school dropout rate with more than 50 per cent dropout rate.”
19. ”High rate of out-of-school children speaks to the issue of the prevalence of insurgency in these states.”
20. ”The only group we negotiated with, which started when I was a deputy governor, was the militants in an area called the Niger Delta.”
21. ”For a negotiation to take place, there should be certain expectations from both sides. We just couldn’t negotiate with the terrorists because such expectations could not be established.”
His achievements and legacies
22. ”Democracy is not just about conducting elections and announcing the winner. Elections must be credible and transparent. They must appear free and fair to all the interest groups.”
23. ”When there is no stability in a country, people find it difficult to enter. That is the difference between Africa’s independence period, when we simply won our freedom, but there was no stability; and now our societies are maturing into stable democracies.”
24. ”Our democracies are becoming institutionalised with even peer review tools being deployed. That is why the economies of many countries are now growing.”
25. ‘‘We cannot claim to have solved all of Nigeria’s problems. No president can safely make such a claim, as no individual can solve all the problems of a nation. But I can say that we tried our best.”
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