'Leave Jonathan alone' - Civil Society Group Challenges Punch Newspapers
- Says
Punch is playing a hatchet role for APC
BY Napoleon
Azeez
THESave Ijaw
Nation Group has reacted to the recent Editorial, by the Punch Newspapers,
titled Jonathan's Pathetic Apologetics, describing it as not only paltry,
whining, but also falling within the category of world-class political
tantrums.
In a press
statement signed by its National Coordinator, Comrade IdrisUsman, and released
on Sunday morning in Abuja, the group said the approach by Punchconfirms its
long-held belief that Punch and some of its partners were in a campaign of
calumny against former President Goodluck Jonathan and his family; stressing
that the said editorial is coming at a time that several agencies and agents of
the incumbent administration are attacking the former President on all fronts;
a situation that has given Nigerians reasons to be worried about the fate of
our nation's democracy, particularly at a time that the Buhari-led
administration, has failed in providing the nation with good governance as
promised, while campaigning for the election.
The statement
in full reads:
PRESS
RELEASE: ENOUGH OF CAMPAIGN OF CALUMNY...NIGER DELTA GROUP WARNS PUNCH
NEWSPAPERS.............
The Save
Ijaw Nation Group wishes to react to the recent Editorial, by the Punch
Newspapers, titled Jonathan's Pathetic Apologetics. We see this editorial
column, as not only paltry, whining, but also falls within the category of
world class political tantrums.
In a most
unexpected approach by a media organisation of Punch's Standard, the rabid
nature of the Editorial, confirms our long held belief that Punch and some of
its partners in the campaign of calumny against former President Goodluck
Jonathan and his family, have abdicated their role as the fourth estate of the
realm, by playing sinister roles and agenda setting.
The role
played by Punch in the said editorial, coming at a time that several agencies
and agents of the incumbent administration are attacking the former President
on all fronts, should give Nigerians reasons to be worried about the fate of
our nation's democracy, at a time that the Buhari-led-administration, have
failed in providing the nation with good governance as promised, while
campaigning for the election.
No doubt,
Nigerians understand the basis of these recent attacks. We are not unaware that
the rising profile of former President Goodluck Jonathan both locally and internationally
has become a source of worry to the Buhari's administration and its trumpets
like the Punch.
They are no
doubts that they are now afraid and intimidated. But these people are quick to
forget that no amount of their campaign of calumny against Dr.Goodluck Jonathan
can cover up the fact that the incumbent administration is a failure. With the
present state of the nation, the incompetent Buhari administration and its
hatchet job executors will not be able to intimidate and blackmail Dr. Jonathan
and other patriotic Nigerians, into silence.
The way
Nigeria is currently being governed should be of more concern to the Punch,
than a Goodluck Jonathan, who has ceased being President of Nigeria, for about
two years now.
Finally, we
want to advise the Punch and others presently engaged in the ignoble agenda of
pulling down Dr. Jonathan, to focus their energy on calling out the incumbent
administration, to start implementing people oriented policies and tackle the
voluminous problems that confront us as a nation today.
Signed by Comrade
IdrisUsman
PICTURING
- Goodluck
Jonathan and his family 1 or 2
SegunAdeniyi and His Gratuitous Rationalizations
By Henry Omoregie
You cannot shave a man’s hair in his
absence. You cannot write a book about someone you never confirmed things with.
Mere gratitude to President Goodluck Jonathan does not translate to his
endorsement of a book he himself dismissed as figment of the author and his
‘reliable’ sources imaginations’
I have always known that portions of
the Fourth Estate of the Realm (Journalism) have been sold to Fifth Columnists
(self-aggrandizing detractors). It has been almost entirely acquired by
political megalomaniacs and hegemonistic rabble-rousers in the country called
Nigeria.
Truth is now spiced and spliced with
lies, falsehoods and calumnious aspersions provided in some cases by the
highest bidders to hungry and self-serving pen-pushers who would rather trade
off their noble professions for an opportunity to live a bigger, un-altruistic
life.
According to Punch News report
published Monday, May 1, 2017, the author of
a new book, ‘Against the Run of Play’,
Mr. SegunAdeniyi, has denied reports that former President Goodluck Jonathan
denied making comments credited to him in the book.
Adeniyi, who is
the Chairman of ThisDay Editorial Board, said this in a statement on Sunday.
Apart from
Jonathan, the book, which was presented last Friday, captured the accounts of
key figures in the 2015 general elections, including former President
OlusegunObasanjo; a national leader of the All Progressives Congress, Asiwaju
Bola Tinubu; and the Minister of Transportation, RotimiAmaechi, among others on
key national issues.
Jonathan, in a
series of tweets on Saturday, however, said the views of many of the
respondents were inaccurate and promised to set the records straight in his
autobiography.
Jonathan’s words
have been interpreted by a section of the social media to mean that the author
misquoted him.
Adeniyi’s
statement read in part, “The respondents President Jonathan was referring to
are the people who spoke to me and whose claims he apparently disputes or
disagrees with. This should be clear enough to those who did not choose to read
his statement with a tendentious accent.
This is an insult on our intellectual
sensibilities. We may not all be trained journalists but many of us do
certainly understand English grammar.
One whole week before his book launch,
SegunAdeniyi’s publication which was leaked to his media friends had begun
salivating the gullible appetites of mischievous twisters of truth to garner
psychological advantage and enhance their confirmation bias.
It was a well-orchestrated
distraction from the failure of Buhari’s
rickety governance style which in Reno Omokri’s words has been dogged by Ghost
leadership, Ghost owners of discovered dollars, and Ghost achievements of the
APC-led failure called the Buhari administration.
One of the lies spread during the reviews
through snippets of Adeniyi’s book was that Ex PresidentGoodluck Jonathan had
‘’commissioned’’ SegunAdeniyi to write a book about his exit from government
via the 2015 polls.
Knowing his antecedents as a crafty
despiser of Jonathan’s tenure, I disbelieved that big fat lie from the first
minute. How can a SegunAdeniyi who about one year into Buhari’s government, attributed the recession
Nigeria got into, to Buhari’s inheritance of a ‘’Broken System’’ from President
Goodluck Jonathan be commissioned by the same Jonathan to write a book about
his travails in government with the likes of Reno Omokri and Reuben Abati still
alive and kicking?
What broken system is he talking
about? A broken system with an economic growth of between 6% and 7% and the 3rd
fastest growing economy on earth as projected by CNNMoney? A broken system
where the TSA, BVN and IPPIS ensured difficulties in misappropriating federal
funds by taking off 80,000 ghost workers from the Federal Civil Service? A
broken system where food prices and dollar naira exchange rates stabilized for
the entire 5 years GEJ led Nigeria?
Impossible! In his rejoinder to
SegunAdeniyi’s then lame and tacit support for Buhari’s cluelessness, Reno
Omokri, Presidential New Media Special Adviser under Jonathan wrote:
''There
is so much misinformation in Nigeria today and I really cannot understand how
the media which was like a Rottweiler under former President Goodluck Jonathan
has suddenly turned into a chihuahua. What is going on? A lot of Nigerian
journalists have reduced themselves to generators of excuses for President
MuhammaduBuhari and I am concerned for the fourth estate of the realm. Really
concerned''!
In
particular, I was rather disappointed when OlusegunAdeniyi, said in his regular
ThisDay back page column entitled ‘Leadership in a Time of Recession’ that ‘I
sympathize with President MuhammaduBuhari because he inherited a broken system’
(published July 28, 2016). Please! Inherited a broken system? Adeniyi in his
piece more or less accused former President Goodluck Jonathan of inheriting a
good system and handing over a worse and broken regime to President
MuhammaduBuhari. What a daring revision of history!
If
any President tried to unbreak the system, that President is former President
Goodluck Jonathan who demystified governance and lifted the veil that prior
administrations had placed on the government infrastructure of Nigeria by
signing the Freedom of Information Act into law on Saturday, May 28, 2011. The
question that should be asked is that if the signing of the FOI law helped to
un-break the system, what was the equal and opposite action for which the FOI
law was a reaction? The system of transparency was broken in Nigeria when Major
General MuhammaduBuhari (as he then was) promulgated Decree Number 2 which made
it a crime for any journalist or individual to report anything that embarrasses
the government EVEN IF IT IS TRUE!
Read more at: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2016/08/that-segun-adeniyi-may-wake-up-and-smell-the-coffee/
So
much for an abysmally apologetic SegunAdeniyi who is telling us he holds
ex-President Jonathan in high esteem. What sort of abstruse reasoning is that?
Now
that his book may be snubbed by many due to Jonathan’s post on his Facebook
Page, Adeniyi’s attempt to strike gold with the Jonathan Brand has been
tobogganed into confusion, hence the hurriedly made up gratuitous
rationalization that GEJ did not rubbish his book, but only rubbished the
claims published in the book.
According
to Punch reports, Adeniyi continued: “But apparently, it is not. President
Jonathan did not say I distorted his views and the fact that others may have
presented him in ways he doesn’t like cannot be taken as an indictment of me or
of my work.”
Explaining the
process that went into the publication of the book, Adeniyi said he gave all
the respondents fragments of the book in advance so that their words would not
be misconstrued.
He added, “For the
record, after my first conversation with President Jonathan, I asked for his
email address and promised to send him the raw text of our conversation which
he could then amend as appropriate. I sent it to him that very day.
“When I went for a
second meeting, I took along a printed copy which we both went through
line-by-line. Whatever he wanted removed, reworked or rephrased was done while
in some areas he provided further context to what he said.
“I went through
this same process with former President OlusegunObasanjo; former Senate
President David Mark; APC National Leader, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu; Governor Nasir
el-Rufai of Kaduna State; former NGF Chairman and current Transportation
Minister, Mr ChibuikeRotimiAmaechi; former Niger State Governor,
Dr.MuazuBabangidaAliyu; and a few other principal actors who all have, in their
emails, the raw text of our conversations.”
Adeniyi also
revealed that computer hackers had obtained soft copies of his book and had
started distributing the copies on social media.
What Adeniyi refused to say in his
press release, was that the Chief Calumny Professional and father of falsehood,
Sahara Reporters owner OmoyeleSowore was one of his acknowledged sources for
writing a book about Jonathan.
Those who indulge in casting
aspersions always cherish audiences which give them accessible pleasures which
in the end culminate in acrid controversy amid babbling gossip.
Jonathan has rubbished the book. Until
he writes his, or a closer Reno Omokri releases his own version of what
transpired in 2014 and 2015 with undiluted facts, SegunAdeniyi’s book will
remain a ‘’Misrepresentation of Facts’’
Henry
Omoregie is Oil and Gas Recruitment Consultant and a Public Affairs Analyst.
-The
opinions and views expressed in this article are solely those of the
writer/author, and do not necessarily represent the editorial policy of
Headline News Nigeria.
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