The All Progressives Congress (APC) says President Goodluck Jonathan lacks the capacity to tackle the challenges facing the country. He has not been able to do anything in six years, even if given more years, nothing would change, the party claimed.
”The President has finally admitted that the two main challenges facing the country are corruption and insecurity, and seems to be telling Nigerians to give him more time to tackle the problems. But the truth is that he lacks the capacity to fight and defeat these challenges, whether in six or 10 years,” the party said in a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed.
”A President who has spent the last six years trying to diagnose the main problems facing the country will apparently need another four years to plan how to tackle the challenges. By then, all of us would have been buried under the rubble of corruption and our country would have been decimated by insecurity. It is therefore time for Nigerians to vote in a President who will hit the ground running, a President who will tackle the problems of corruption and insecurity headlong, without giving excuses for failure,” it said.
The opposition slammed the Jonathan administration as corrupt, noting that a corrupt government can never fight corruption.
”Mr. President said he wants to put in place the institutions to tackle corruption before taking on the canker worm that has almost destroyed the fabric of our society. Pray, whatever happened to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC)? Were they not institutions specifically created for the purpose of tackling corruption, but which the Jonathan Administration chose to castrate?
”There is no better way to say this: President Jonathan lacks the political will to tackle corruption, and he will not tackle it if he spends 60 years in office,” the statement read.
The APC also criticized the way Jonathan has handled Boko Haram insurgency. According to the party, the president missed the chance to nip the menace in the bud when it just started, as he was busy blaming everyone.
”Had the President learnt a lesson or two from the crushing defeat of the Maitatsine sect by Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, which signalled the death knell of the sect that is a precursor of Boko Haram, the insurgency that is daily claiming the lives of our citizens would have been defeated early on.
”It is too late in the day for President Jonathan to engage in sophistry over the twin evil of corruption and insecurity. He has reached the limit of his capacity to tackle these challenges and it is time to allow those with necessary political will and capacity to take on the challenges before they crush the country,” the party said.