Former President Goodluck Jonathan says the soundness of his economic team ensured that prices did not spiral out of control during his administration.
The ex-President speaking at Eagle square, Abuja, at the Peoples Democratic Party non-elective national convention, said despite serious challenges including a major flood in 2012, Nigerians had food to eat and at manageable prices.
Accompanied to the podium by his former deputy vice president, Namadi Sambo, and other party chieftain, Jonathan appeared disturbed by some of the corruption allegations and looting discoveries, trailing his administration since its twilight.
He said, “Though we didn’t completely plug the loopholes in the fight against corruption, but we did well.
“I learnt that some people said that if the PDP had remained in power beyond 2015, the economy would have been worse. This couldn’t have been the case, because we had a sound economic team in place.
“Let us not forget that the great floods of 2012 were a major calamity that damaged homes and farmlands on the plains of River Niger and Benue.
“But despite the devastating effects of this natural disaster, there were no food shortages or arbitrary increase in prices, because of what we were able to accomplish with our agriculture transformation agenda, which considerably boosted food production.
“If we say that we rekindled hope in our people and regained international goodwill, it is because we pursued a number of policies and programmes that were not only richly rewarding for our people, but were also being copied by many countries across the globe, a few of which I will mention here.”
He harped on the successes of his administration including presiding over the emergence of the nation as the largest economic powerhouse in Africa with a GDP of over $500 billion, a single digit inflation rate, and a top destination for Foreign Direct Investment.
Jonathan rallied the Peoples Democratic Party, encouraging the members to be of good courage as God loves the PDP.
“The PDP is indeed back to reclaim its prime position as the party to lead Nigeria to greatness. As a human institution we cannot claim perfection, but obviously as a political party, our accomplishments as of 2015 far outweigh our shortfalls,” he said.
Jonathan also stated, “Nobody should intimidate the PDP. I believe in the PDP; even God Himself believes in the PDP. Today is August 12, look at the weather.
“God wants us to celebrate in the PDP, that’s why there is no rain. We are ready to take over the state houses of assembly, the National Assembly, the states as governors and the Presidency.
“It is important we manage our differences responsibly, with an eye on the divine role of the PDP to lead Nigeria to greatness. Let us rededicate ourselves to playing by the rules.
“Let us all ensure that the PDP is renewed in vigour to deliver on its divine responsibility to Nigerians. Let us forget the grievances of the past and look to the future with confidence and optimism.
“I urge you to go back to your respective constituencies to promote the ideals of our great party. Let it be known that our party has been born anew, committed to the best ideals of democracy.”
Nigeria's best president ever. You fought the good fight, your results are there for the world to see. Your successors came in with only one thing in their mind, vengeance. They were only out to tarnish your good image by making wild allegations.
Now they have failed beyond woeful levels, APC government is a disaster and the results has been shocking. Ritual killings is now a big business in some parts of the country. Hunger has chased many people out of their homes to IDP camps.
Prices were not out of control ? I remember buying one litre of petrol at 500 naira
Nigerians depended on forex availability to conduct businesses virtually and physically , You sir and your boys shared all the shareable dollars after eating all the monies in the foreign reserve , You destroyed the Value of Naira with wasteful spending and empty treasury, IF EVERYTHING else was fallacy , $2.1B you gave to dasuki , we do not know what you actually shared , more than $400M in Denziani's possession, let's not forget your wife's Trillion naira balance at one of the banks and another $5.9M frozen with skye bank
Let's not forget 40B in Tompolo's account , oh and Olisa metuah and all other members of your cabinet each spent time in jail and refunded monies
So many more things to add , not like some ediots won't come and tell me ""it's been two years stop blaming"" past administration
Yeah $120/barrel oil, no significant infrastructural development, Nigeria still remained a poor country. Finance minister was already predicting doom and gloom if oil dropped to $65/barrel. Now we've had oil at an average of $35/barrel and this man thinks he could have held anything together abeg let's stop the jokes.
GMBuhari: Prices were not out of control ? I remember buying one litre of petrol at 500 naira
Nigerians depended on forex availability to conduct businesses virtually and physically , You sir and your boys shared all the shareable dollars after eating all the monies in the foreign reserve , You destroyed the Value of Naira with wasteful spending and empty treasury, IF EVERYTHING else was fallacy , $2.1B you gave to dasuki , we do not know what you actually shared , more than $400M in Denziani's possession, let's not forget your wife's Trillion naira balance at one of the banks and another $5.9M frozen with skye bank
Let's not forget 40B in Tompolo's account , oh and Olisa metuah and all other members of your cabinet each spent time in jail and refunded monies
So many more things to add , not like some ediots won't come and tell me ""it's been two years stop blaming"" past administration
I bought fuel for 1200 for just one litre in 2016 under Buharry mismanagement. I even bought dollar at 522 naira. This current government is so so corrupt.
kaypling: Yeah $120/barrel oil, no significant infrastructural development, Nigeria still remained a poor country. Finance minister was already predicting doom and gloom if oil dropped to $65/barrel. Now we've had oil at an average of $35/barrel and this man thinks he could have held anything together abeg let's stop the jokes.
Is it Jonathan that crashed world oil prices? Didnt Buharry Promise to stabilise oil prices worldwide?
Powerfully stated. While some folks will be quick to cry looting, curruption, oil price crash, stop and meditate on what this great man just said. Then ask yourself, are you able to afford things like you used to? That's the only thing that concerns the common man irrespective of the party in power.
This buffoon comes across as the most dillusional idiot the planet's ever seen. After binging on poorly refined liquor, the halfwit goes on to make a successful mess of himself and those who adore him.
Were this to be a society where criminals are duly held accountable, a character like him would have been languishing in some max security prison drawing grafitty on the walls, counting the days until he gets the lethal injection. But in such a society as ours with ample supply of pigs and idiots, there's no gainsaying you'd find likes mind like himself ever ready to validate every inanity of his.
GMBuhari: Prices were not out of control ? I remember buying one litre of petrol at 500 naira
Nigerians depended on forex availability to conduct businesses virtually and physically , You sir and your boys shared all the shareable dollars after eating all the monies in the foreign reserve , You destroyed the Value of Naira with wasteful spending and empty treasury, IF EVERYTHING else was fallacy , $2.1B you gave to dasuki , we do not know what you actually shared , more than $400M in Denziani's possession, let's not forget your wife's Trillion naira balance at one of the banks and another $5.9M frozen with skye bank
Let's not forget 40B in Tompolo's account , oh and Olisa metuah and all other members of your cabinet each spent time in jail and refunded monies
So many more things to add , not like some ediots won't come and tell me ""it's been two years stop blaming"" past administration
I agree with Jonathan: Things were bad but not this bad. Prices were not out of control as we are experiencing now with Buhari. My verdict: Both Goodluck Jonathan and Muhammadu Buhari are bad administrators and we regret having them.
GMBuhari: Prices were not out of control ? I remember buying one litre of petrol at 500 naira
Nigerians depended on forex availability to conduct businesses virtually and physically , You sir and your boys shared all the shareable dollars after eating all the monies in the foreign reserve , You destroyed the Value of Naira with wasteful spending and empty treasury, IF EVERYTHING else was fallacy , $2.1B you gave to dasuki , we do not know what you actually shared , more than $400M in Denziani's possession, let's not forget your wife's Trillion naira balance at one of the banks and another $5.9M frozen with skye bank
Let's not forget 40B in Tompolo's account , oh and Olisa metuah and all other members of your cabinet each spent time in jail and refunded monies
So many more things to add , not like some ediots won't come and tell me ""it's been two years stop blaming"" past administration
Is it Jonathan that crashed fuel prices? Didnt Buharry Promise to stabilise oil prices worldwide?
Huh!!! We're talking about management of resources here. None of those guys could have done anything about oil prices. It was simple econs, demand and supply. However as far as buhari stabilizing oil prices (which he never said), at least Nigeria was exempt from the opec oil production cut. The cut was to help some member countries like Nigeria. The cut helped in the improvement in oil prices
Progressive01: This buffoon comes across as the most dillusional idiot the planet's ever seen. After binging on poorly refined liquor, the halfwit goes on to make a successful mess of himself and those who adore him.
Were this to be a society where criminals are duly held accountable, a character like him would have been languishing in some max security prison drawing grafitty on the walls, counting the days until he gets the lethal injection. But in such a society as ours with ample supply of pigs and idiots, there's no gainsaying you'd find likes mind like himself ever ready to validate every inanity of his.
How unfortunate.
You are right, Nigeria doesn't punish incompetent presidents, if they do, Buharry should still be languishing in kirikiri for destabilising Nigeria's democracy.
You are right, Nigeria doesn't punish incompetent presidents, if they do, Buharry should still be languishing in kirikiri for destabilising Nigeria's democracy.
Where on earth does winning an election become a source of instability if not in q place like Nigeria with a horde of sour losers who changed from Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria to Indigenous people of biafra OVERNIGHT?
But corruption was out of control. Bravo mr dullard. It would have even better to let the price out of control than the corruption you unleached on the economy foundation of the country.
After my release from a three-day incarceration which terminated two days ago, I lost the appetite to contribute to discussions here. Nevertheless, upon some consideration I decided to do this.
For those who insist we just forgot about the immediate past admin and concentrate squarely on the current one, well, you might have a good point but the problem is, the guys that push this line of thought are the same guys that keep attributing every accomplishment of this government to Jonathan. When it has to do with some cheery news, an assembly plant here and there, stable power supply, etc, they go "oh thank you GEJ", but when those idiotic murderers set off a bomb, or the local currency takes a beating, they don't hesitate a split second to blame the President.
There's no gainsaying most of the ills we suffer today, from economic hardship (devaluation of the naira) to ethnoreligous intolerance have their roots from seeds sown by the past leaderships, especially Jonathan's.
So, in the spirit of fair coverage and keeping the legacies of Ebele alive, I decided to do this little piece.
Enjoy.
We've heard, on several accounts, about incidences of massive corruption under Jonathan's administration, chief amongst which were:
1. Fuel subsidy scam: This is arguably the biggest fraud in the country's recorded history. From the outcome of several probes, it was revealed that the monies stolen under this scheme ran into $16.4 billion. On some accounts, we had up to 2.56trillion naira stolen, the most conservative of which was 1.8trillion naira. The fact that the figures couldn't be reconciled by the various bodies who should have a common figure as to how much was actually expended on subsidy, from the Finance ministry to DPR, PPPRA, to CBN, showed that indeed the expenditure was questionable.
The most chilling part of this was that it was done with no supplementary approval (budget) from the NASS, in blatant violation of extant fiscal laws. Under the budget, only about 356 billion naira was appropriated. To this day, no explanation has been given as to what accounted for the astronomical rise in subsidy expenditure.
2. Pensions Fraud: Under this scam, we saw over 400billion naira (over $2.5billion then) stolen by Maina and his gang. sunnewsonline.com/new/n469bn-police-pension-fund-scam-they-want-me-dead-maina/
3. Crude oil theft: Under saint Jonathan's admin, according to the coordinating Minister of the Economy, Nigeria was losing a princely $12.6billion. thenationonlineng.net/new/oil-theft-and-a-ministers-lament/ . In this interview, Jonathan even sank as low as blaming the oil thefts on "the refineries abroad!!" He didn't think his surveillance contractors or himself had any blames to take whatsoever. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCZos8xM7Iw. How much more dishonourable can a leader be?
4. Kerosine subsidy mega scam: Under the guise of a nonexistent subsidy on kerosine, the government of Goodluck Jonathan expended a whooping $8.76billion. This fraud was so staggering the governor of the nation's apex bank had to blow the whistle. But rather than investigate and bring offenders to justice, Jonathan went for broke, persecuted and criminalised the whistle blower! www.punchng.com/feature/kerosene-subsidy-the-hidden-mega-scam/www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-26535530
At the risk of sounding verbose, I'd limit the cases to these as they are some of the most publicised cases of barefaced theft under the immediate past admin.
Now, let us sum up the figures above: 16 + 2 + 12 + 8 = $38billion!! The greatest betrayal of the mandate given Jonathan by Nigerians was that not a SINGLE individual is serving a jail term over this rot. That seindividual is serving a jail term over this rot.[/b] That sends but only one signal to discerning minds- that the presidency itself must have been complicit in the whole scheme.
Here are some potentially life changing projects these monies could have been channelled into had Jonathan and his henchmen shown a little bit of honour and commitment to the course for which the Nigerian people elevated to where they were.
I call them the Opportunity Costs of Corruption.
1. The Itaipu Hydro Electric Dam. I chose to refer to this first because the problem of inadequate power supply is one that affects every single Nigerian and as a problem, has defied solutions by successive administrations, not because of insolvency but corruption.
Jonathan's government spent over $8billion ( www.thisdaylive.com/articles/fg-states-lgs-spend-8-26bn-on-nipp-projects/202324/ ) generating nothing but darkness. In the twilight of his administration, the economy of the nation was literally shut down as power supply dropped to its lowest levels in the country's recorded history.
Itaipu dam was built by joint effort between two countries- Brazil and Paraguay. It is the world's second largest hydroelectric plant with an installed capacity 14GW. It supplies 75% of electricity consumed by Paraguay and 17% of that consumed by Brazil. It cost both countries and investors $20billion to build to finish!
Let's put these figures into perspective: Kainji dam, Nigeria's premier electricity generation facility has an installed capacity of 760MW and cost us $209million to build. There are 1000megawatts (1000MW) in 1gigawatt (1GW). If we were to convert, we would have 0.760GW of electricity being produced by Kainji. ie. Kainji dam generates approximately 5.4% of what Itaipu generates!!
Now, had Jonathan's government decided to build an Itaipu-like dam rather than stealing the monies above, they would still have kept a change of $18billion and Nigeria electricity problem would have been history!
Given that the nation has a total installed capacity of 10,000MW (10GW) and an "available" capacity of 6,000MW (6GW), the total is still 4,000MW shy of Itaipu's capacity and what could actually be transmitted is 8,000MW shy of Itaipu's. Isn't this a disgrace??
The economic benefits in terms of employment and wealth creation having such a facility brings to a country can only be imagined.
2. John Hopkins Hospital: All of these for just - wait for it- $1.1billion!!!. m.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/its_open_the_johns_hopkins_hospitals_new_11_billion_building_welcomes_first_patients
With citizen dying of very preventable causes and spending millions of dollars yearly on seeking medicare abroad, imagine what a facility like this could have done for us in terms of prevention of deaths, prevention of capital flight and medical research.
Now, with both projects in the kitty, we still have about $16.9billion left!
3. The Mogul of Mumbai: This is one monstrosity that has placed India shoulder to shoulder with superpowers of engineering and technology. It is one of the world's largest petrochemical refineries with a capacity to refine 600,000 bpd. With annual revenues in the region of $18billion, one can only imagine what a facility like this could do to a country's economy.
Now, guess how much it took investors to set this up- a "paltry" $3.2billion!!
Subtracting this from the 16.9, we would have a change of $13.7billion left.
4. Danyang–Kunshan Grand Bridge: Nothing demonstrates Jonathan's grand deceit than his non-completion of the second Niger Bridge which happened to be one of his strongest campaign promises during 2011 elections. He even went as far as saying he'd go on exile if he doesn't complHe even went as far as saying he'd go on exile if he doesn't complete that bridge before 2015!!
The Danyang Grand Bridge is a 165km engineering masterpiece built in four years, the same duration of time Jonathan plans to deliver his fabled Second Niger bridge of 1.5km!!.
Let's play with these figures a little: for a bridge of 165km to be built in 4years, it means about 3.5km would be built in a month!! Just imagine this!! It means the Chinese would take less than a moth to deliver what it would take Jonathan 48months to complete!!! If that doesn't make your head spin, then I don't know what else would.
To the interesting part: it took just $8.5billion to deliver this.
Again, subtracting from the change we are left with, upon building one hundred and ten second Niger Bridges (165km divide by 1.5km), we would still have a change of over $5billion left!! There are a billion and one things we could do with this amount of money as a nation!
These are but just a few things this nation could have done with the proceeds of corruption and incompetence in the last admin.
It remains to be seen how Jonathan cuts the image of a "hero" deserving of a Nobel Prize.
GMBuhari: Prices were not out of control ? I remember buying one litre of petrol at 500 naira
Nigerians depended on forex availability to conduct businesses virtually and physically , You sir and your boys shared all the shareable dollars after eating all the monies in the foreign reserve , You destroyed the Value of Naira with wasteful spending and empty treasury, IF EVERYTHING else was fallacy , $2.1B you gave to dasuki , we do not know what you actually shared , more than $400M in Denziani's possession, let's not forget your wife's Trillion naira balance at one of the banks and another $5.9M frozen with skye bank
Let's not forget 40B in Tompolo's account , oh and Olisa metuah and all other members of your cabinet each spent time in jail and refunded monies
So many more things to add , not like some ediots won't come and tell me ""it's been two years stop blaming"" past administration
I thought I was the only one who bought 4 litres of petrol @ 2500 in 2014. The problem with NIGERIA is not just the politicians, but the followers too, WHO were never sincere in their CHOICES of leaders.
I bought fuel for 1200 for just one litre in 2016 under Buharry mismanagement. I even bought dollar at 522 naira. This current government is so so corrupt.
You bought fuel for 1200 ?? That's a big fat lie and even if it happened then you must live where they burst pipelines to protest , cause and effect, you suffered it and since then has anyone sold above 145 ?? you are just being ridiculous
You bought dollar at 500 ?? i can't believe that the highest dollar ever got was 450 at banks
Progressive01: Where on earth does winning an election become a source of instability if not in q place like Nigeria with a horde of sour losers who changed from Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria to Indigenous people of biafra OVERNIGHT?
Where on earth does herdsmen kill and rape innocent citizens in their own lands and the hopeless government remains silent in the face of thousands of deaths and complaints if not in Nigeria? The people are right to agitate and change incompetent leadership, call it any name you choose.
You bought fuel for 1200 ?? That's a big fat lie and even if it happened then you must live where they burst pipelines to protest , cause and effect, you suffered it and since then has anyone sold above 145 ?? you are just being ridiculous
You bought dollar at 500 ?? i can't believe that the highest dollar ever got was 450 at banks
Compare that I was buying fuel for 87 naira all through Jonathan administration.
You want me to buy dollars from banks you are a real joker Which bank ever had dollar?
I thought I was the only one who bought 4 litres of petrol @ 2500 in 2014. The problem with NIGERIA is not just the politicians, but the followers too, WHO were never sincere in their CHOICES of leaders.
I bough 4 litres under Buharry for N4,800, the problem with Nigeria is zombiesm, a disease which tries to mask incompetence and throw blamed at better administrations.
Where on earth does herdsmen kill and rape innocent citizens in their own lands and the hopeless government remains silent in the face of thousands of deaths and complaints if not in Nigeria? The people are right to agitate and change incompetent leadership, call it any name you choose.
That is their effing business and I pray they get the darn country tomorrow. My worst regret would be having them still occupying the same national boundary as me sunrise tomorrow.
successmatters: Nigeria's best president ever. You fought the good fight, your results are there for the world to see. Your successors came in with only one thing in their mind, vengeance. They were only out to tarnish your good image by making wild allegations.
Now they have failed beyond woeful levels, APC government is a disaster and the results has been shocking. Ritual killings is now a big business in some parts of the country. Hunger has chased many people out of their homes to IDP camps.
It's really terrible.
He truly has been one of the best. The dullard Buhari was sent to punish us.
