10 political statements that shook Nigeria to its foundation since 1999
The Nigerian political class and elites out of desperation, regularly over heat the polity with careless utterances and comments that are capable of dividing the nation.
These comments are usually before major elections when the stakes are usually high for who gets what in politics.
Rightly so, these comments were condemned by many political observers, analysts and commentators because of their inciting nature, divisive tendencies and also violent tone.
Most careless and inciting statements are made in political campaign grounds
NAIJ.com lists 10 statements by some members of the political class that shook Nigeria to its foundation.
Read below:
1. Before the 2007 general elections, former president Olusegun Obasanjo while addressing Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) members in Abeokuta, Ogun state, on February 10, 2007 said: ”It is left to you to ensure that we elect credible and committed leaders. I commend those of you in the PDP for your efforts so far. I will campaign. This election is a do-or-die affair for me and the PDP. This coming election is a matter of life and death for PDP and Nigeria.”
2. President Muhammadu Buhari while addressing his supporters in the defunct Congress for Progressives Change (CPC) on May 14, 2012 said: ”If what happened in 2011 (alleged rigging) should again happen in 2015, by the grace of God, the dog and the baboon would all be soaked in blood.”
3. Reacting to Buhari’s threat, Asari Dokubo while speaking to Channels Television on September 8, 2013 said: ”2015 is already a settled matter. Goodluck Jonathan would be President in 2015. Whether they contest or they don’t. If they say the blood of the dogs and the baboons will be soaked in the streets, or salt water in the streets, we will help them in blood in the streets.”
4. Former vice president, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, while reacting to former president Goodluck Jonathan’s decision to contest the 2011 elections against what he termed the ”zoning policy of the PDP” said: ”Those who make peaceful change impossible will make violent change inevitable.”
5. Alhaji Kaita Lawal, a close associate of Atiku added his voice to the agitation then in a rather threatening tone. He said: ”The North is determined, if it happens, to make the country ungovernable for President Jonathan or any other southerner who finds his way to the seat of power on the platform of the PDP against the principle of the party’s zoning policy.”
6. Senator Shehu Sani, then a civil rights activist in Kaduna, also said: ”President Goodluck Jonathan should not contemplate contesting the 2011 presidential election. Any attempt by him to contest amounts to incitement and a recipe for political instability.”
7. Minister of transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, who was the director general of the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential campaign before the 2015 election said: ”If the 2015 elections are rigged, the party will not recognize the outcome and will go ahead and form a parallel government.”
8. Chief Ralph Uwazurike, leader of the MASSOB, before the 2015 elections, told his supporters: ‘‘No Igbo man will become president in Nigeria because the Igbo have no agenda for 2015; Igbos are going nowhere because they have no agenda. The Hausas have agenda, The Yorubas have agenda and even the South south have agenda; that is why they have produced the current president, but the Igbo have none, hence they are going nowhere…nobody has been given pwer free of charge, you must go for power.”
9. Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of IPOB and director of Radio Biafra in far away America in 2015 said: ”We need guns and bullets from you people in America…..on the 22nd of this month something will happen it’s called the blood moon…, in 1967 before the war started there was a blood moon as well and there is blood moon this year because after this year we are going to be free no matter what happens because if we don’t get Biafra, everybody will have to DIE, as simple as that”.
10. Kingsley Kuku, head of the presidential amnesty programme in Jonathan’s government told the US State Department led by the deputy assistant secretary of state (Bureau of African Affairs), Donald Teitelbaum in America, before the 2015 elections: ”There would be dire consequences in the Niger Delta, should Goodluck Jonathan fail to secure a fresh term in 2015. It is only a Jonathan presidency that can guarantee continued peace and energy security in the Niger Delta”.
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