Today, I inaugurated the board of the Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P) under the leadership of Dr. Christopher Kolade. I also had the great privilege of kicking off the Public Works Women and Youth Empowerment Programme which is an intervention programme designed to employ 370,000 youths in the year 2012 with 30% of those jobs being reserved for women. This programme will also place young graduates as interns in firms and companies with a view to sharpening their skills preparatory to engaging in entrepreneurship and those firms that choose to retain these graduates will be given incentives by the Federal Government. This is only one step in government's plan to provide the enabling environment for all willing Nigerians to get to work and compliments the Youth Enterprise With Innovation in Nigeria (YouWin) initiative which I launched on the 11th of October 2011.

I want to close this day by remembering a great fallen patriot, a man who paid the Supreme price for this nation and a man whose zeal for Nigeria's unity knew no bounds. Today, I remember General Murtala Ramat Mohammed who fell to the assassins bullets on this day 26 years ago. May his soul continue to rest in peace. GEJ

Seun:

https://www.facebook.com/jonathangoodluck/posts/323375514379496

Eagle75:

Today, I inaugurated the board of the Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P) under the leadership of Dr. Christopher Kolade. I also had the great privilege of kicking off the Public Works Women and Youth Empowerment Programme which is an intervention programme designed to employ 370,000 youths in the year 2012 with 30% of those jobs being reserved for women. This programme will also place young graduates as interns in firms and companies with a view to sharpening their skills preparatory to engaging in entrepreneurship and those firms that choose to retain these graduates will be given incentives by the Federal Government. This is only one step in government's plan to provide the enabling environment for all willing Nigerians to get to work and compliments the Youth Enterprise With Innovation in Nigeria (YouWin) initiative which I launched on the 11th of October 2011.

I want to close this day by remembering a great fallen patriot, a man who paid the Supreme price for this nation and a man whose zeal for Nigeria's unity knew no bounds. Today, I remember General Murtala Ramat Mohammed who fell to the assassins bullets on this day 26 years ago. May his soul continue to rest in peace. GEJ


Oga na 36yrs ago not 26yrs, every other things said; we dey watch ooo.

Mai-suya:

I just have 2 questions:

1. Where are the initial promised palliatives, including the commissioned busses meant for states?

2. When are we going to stop commissioning, kickstarting, constituting and start enjoying dividends, getting results, showing progress so far?

kutchs:

Good job My presido! Your detractors will surely eat their words leta.

passyjango:

Creating jobs is good, 370,000 jobs may not make any impact on the huge unemployment level in the country, but will make a huge difference to the youths you are lucky enough to secure them as well as their families. However, we need to move away from will and start getting things done.

Exactly on October 7, 1967, the federal troops under the command of Lt Col Murtala Ramat Mohammed committed the greatest genocide in Af, rica’s history. In a broadcast at Benin to signal what is to happen at Asaba on September 21, 1967, Lt Col Mohammed thundered, “I have already dispatched my forces to deal with the rebels around Agbor and Asaba”. Little wonder why Igbo women were violated, children maimed, pregnant women violated and their pregnancies emboweled from Benin, Agbor, Ibusa, Ogwashi-Uku with the grand finale been the butchering of over 2000 defenseless men and male children who had rolled out their drums to rejoice with the federal troops for recapturing Asaba from Biafran forces at St Patrick’s College area of Asaba by Lt Col Mohammed’s troop for alleged “Biafra sympathy”. All these happened in total disregard to the Geneva Convention and federal directive issued by the then Nigeria’s HOS, Major-General Yakubu Gowon.

In the words of 58 years old eye witness, Ifeanyi Uraih, who was a resident of Asaba then with his nine siblings and parents, “I cannot tell this story without tears in my eyes, but I have no bitterness in my heart… They ordered everyone to come out to the town square… They were honest with us. They told us they were going to kill us. They took us to the mounted machine guns. Then it dawned on us that it was true. I was standing with my older brother at the edge of the crowd. He was holding my hand. He had always taken care of me. We shared the same bed. He was the first to be dragged away by the soldiers. He let go of my hand and pushed me into the crowd. He was shot in the back. I could see the blood gushing from his back. He was the first victim of the massacre. Then all hell let loose. I lost count of time. To this day, I live with the smell of the blood of my brethren that night. Even the heavens wept for the victims of this holocaust. Finally the bullets stopped.” Luckily Uraih made it alive because the bodies of the people who were killed fell and buffered and him.

It is indeed 44 years today but the wound are still fresh. According to Chinelo Egwuatu, another survivor of the genocide, “We can forgive but we should never, ever forget… There is no way you can bring the people back, but you can at least acknowledge that it happened.” Special thanks to the University of Florida Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and its team of researchers ably led by Erin H. Kimmerle, Professors Elizabeth Si Bird and Fraser Ottanelli who have elected to “break the silence, honour the dead, develop a historic record of the event and secure funding to build the permanent memorial”.

On the part of the Federal Government, it is time we put this ugly part of our history permanently behind us by giving the dead deserving state burial and proper apologies rendered to the surviving families of these great Nigerians, whose blood were wasted by bloodlust and hate-mongering soldiers. Anything less is begging the question and it behoves us all as Nigerians to seek justice for the dead

Mai-suya:

I just have 2 questions:

1. Where are the initial promised palliatives, including the commissioned busses meant for states?

2. When are we going to stop commissioning, kickstarting, constituting and start enjoying dividends, getting results, showing progress so far?

Samoo01:

President "Goodluck" Jonathan, an ex shoeless proletariat who's never seen a spending program he doesn't like, staged another event on Monday to propagandize his nominal "job creation program" by announcing his intention to create [b]370,000 new government jobs.[/b]

Sounds good on paper. Or does it?

afam4eva:

Sure-P sounds like the name of a rapper.