Guardian

THE All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) has enjoined Christians to embrace their fellow compatriots irrespective of their religious leanings with the spirit of love and brotherliness.

In a Christmas message, the National Chairman of the party, Ogbonaya Onu, urged Christians to work towards ensuring the progress and unity of the country.

Onu noted: “On the occasion of this year’s Christmas celebration, the All Nigeria Peoples Party joins the rest of the global Christian family to urge that in the joyful spirit of the season, we rededicate ourselves to the enduring attributes of love of neighbour and country, peaceful co-existence and harmony as well as clutching firmly to those bonds that bind and releasing the lever of those gaps that divide us as one people with a common destiny.

“We must resolve to conquer poverty, defeat illiteracy, reduce joblessness and more importantly, annul those vices that injure our desire for a new and modern Nigeria that all Nigerians will be proud of and other nations will respect.

“We must never forget that respect does not come because you desire it but rather because, you deserve it.  We must work hard for the unity, peace and prosperity of our dear nation.

“We should never forget that we were created in the image of God. We should therefore never be divided by how we worship Him. We implore our compatriots to remain resolute in the conviction that Nigeria must climb the mountain-top and take her rightful place in the comity of prosperous nations.”

In a related development, ANPP has described President Goodluck Jonathan as a clueless leader that cannot take the country to the promised land.

The party’s latest position came days after President Goodluck Jonathan, while addressing a Christian congregation during the Christmas celebration, said that his government is actually slow because it does not want to make mistakes.

Indeed, President Jonathan was quoted as saying that: “By human thinking our administration is slow; I won’t say we are slow, but we need to think through things properly if we are to make lasting impact. If we rush, we will make mistakes and sometimes it is more difficult to correct those mistakes.”

The ANPP believes that it was unfortunate that at this time that the nation faces myriad of challenges, the President’s admissions was unjustifiable. The ANPP noted that such an admission from President Jonathan smacks of cluelessness and lack of creativity on his part as far as matters of governance are concerned.

The ANPP posited that all over the world, governments work with timeliness, schedules and measurable goals to allow the people gauge the progress of the leadership, and the chronology of the overall national development.

It noted: “This is why it is glaring that The President might be telling Nigerians not to hold his government responsible for failed goals, targets, and expectations. In fact, he seems to be passing the buck of leadership to philosophical silence; and we believe this is one luxury the nation cannot afford at the moment. The people need to know when they shall have enough megawatts of power in the national grid.

“They need to know when the nation shall be extricated from the trap of foreign debts; they need to know when the massive stealing from the common purse shall stop; they want to know when exactly jobs shall be created.”

However, erstwhile Lagos State Commissioner of Police and renown social critic, Abubakar Tsav (rtd), has stated that President Goodluck Jonathan was imposed on Nigerians by former president Olusegun Obasanjo hence he became president by accident.

Tsav who spoke with journalists in Makurdi at the weekend, however, urged Mr. President to do away with some members of his cabinet for him to record better performance in the coming year, stressing that as long as he continues to keep some persons in his cabinet, he will never perform well.

“As far as I know, the man was never prepared to be president. He became president by accident as Obasanjo imposed him on us and that is why he is behaving this way.”

Commenting on President Jonathan’s promise to enhance better performance in 2013, the former police boss retorted: “The man is a big liar. What stopped him from performing this year? He himself admitted he had been slow; what made him to be slow?”

The erstwhile police boss further lauded the recent statement credited to Asari Dokubo as accusing the President of non performance, pointing out that Dokubo spoke the minds of many Nigerians about Jonathan’s governance style.

He urged President Jonathan to change his tactics of governance and be more serious in his war against corruption by quickly reshuffling his cabinet.

“The way forward is for the man to change his tactics and be more serious in his war against corruption. He should change some of his cabinet members because some of them are misleading him while some are responsible for his inaction and non-performance,“ he maintained.