Tinubu's claim is nothing but a lie--GEJ

President Goodluck Jonathan on Friday said there
was no truth in the claim by  national leader of
the All Progressive Congress, Bola
Tinubu, that he offered the former Lagos State
governor the opportunity to serve as VP in a proposed Interim National
Government.
Jonathan, who spoke with State House
correspondents in Abuja through his Special
Adviser on Media and Publicity, Dr. Reuben Abati,
described Tinubu’s claim as absurd and ridiculous.
Tinubu had, in a statement by his media office on
Thursday, claimed that the recent attacks on his
person were because he rejected the offer by
Jonathan to serve as the Vice President in an ING.
He claimed that having refused the offer, the President was looking for ways to take him out
either by killing him or getting him arrested based
on trumped up charges.
But Abati insisted that the position of Jonathan
had remained that the idea of an ING is treasonable.
He said the President had made it clear that he
had neither proposed the idea at any forum nor
discussed it with anybody.
He added that as a democratically elected President, Jonathan’s ambition could never be to
head an ING under whatever circumstances.
The presidential spokesman said Jonathan was
going into the March 28 presidential election with
the conviction that he had performed well and
majority of Nigerians would vote for him massively.
He explained that the President therefore has no
reason whatsoever to support such an unconstitutional proposition as ING which would amount to assault on democratic principles.
He said, “If you de-construct the statement that purportedly emanated from the office of Asiwaju
Tinubu, you will see again the absurd nature of it.
“The absolutely ridiculous nature of it in the sense
that given the configuration of Nigeria, it is not
likely, totally impossible to have an ING arrangement in which you will have a southerner
as the President and then another southerner as Vice President.
“It is absurd. It is not something that is likely to
work given the nature of our politics.
“But the Tinubu camp, putting out that statement,
were so much in a hurry to engage in their usual
game of deceiving the public of propagandaism
of the current electoral process, that the
emptiness, the hollowness, the shallowness of
their proposition escaped them.”
Abati appealed to Nigerians to dismiss Tinubu’s
claim as “another gimmick coming from a
desperate political group seeing that defeat is
staring them in the face.”
He said Nigerians might witness greater
desperation from the opposition’s camp as the
nation gets closer to the general elections.
“But our appeal to Nigerians is that this country
is greater than everyone’s ambition and at the
end of the day what is important is Nigeria.
“And those who seem determined to pull down
this country with lies, with black information, they
are the bane of this country and do not deserve to enjoy opportunities that they do not deserve,”
he concluded.

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