Jonathan cautions statesmen on ‘provocative statements’

…  Senior citizens making inflammatory statements are touts – President
President Goodluck Jonathan on Wednesday declared that elder statesmen making provocative statements that could set the country ablaze are motor park touts.
He, however, did not mention the names of the statesmen making such provocative statements in the country.

But former President Olusegun Obasanjo had severally faulted Jonathan’s administration with his latest accusation that the President has depleted Nigeria’s foreign reserves.
Speaking while receiving the Northern Elders Council (NEC) at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, Jonathan said: “Some people call themselves statesmen but they are not statesmen they are just ordinary politicians. For you to be a statesman is not because you have occupied a big office before but the question is what are you bringing to bear? Are you building this country? Or are you a part of people who tell lies to destroy this country?”
“To create enmity and make people who ordinarily would have been living together to fight themselves. Are you planning to set the country ablaze because you did not get that particular thing you want?”
Continuing, he said: “At the appropriate time Nigerians will know all of us even though I know most of you know us but the younger ones do not know. Some people are hiding under some clogs, some big names and creating problems in this country.”
“Making provocative statements in this country, statements that will set this country ablaze and you tell me you are a senior citizen. You are not a senior citizen you can never be, you are an ordinary motor park tout.”
“Because if you are a senior citizen, you will act like one. It is not because of the offices we occupy, but it is by divine grace and providence that some of us occupy these offices. But what role are you playing to build this country?”
He noted that without peace and unity there can never be development.
He said: “I feel sad that our younger ones are beginning to see a Nigeria as if we are so divided. A Nigeria where Muslims and a Christians cannot seat down together. I was told that even the driver of Tafawa Balewa was a Christian. Our people lived together in those days and why not now that we have even modern ways of life.”
“Our children leave us and go abroad they stay together and do a lot of things together. But when we come back home we begin to build walls, this is a southerner, this is a northerner, this is a Muslim, this is a Christians, this is a Yoruba man, this is an Hausa man, this is an Ijaw man, this is a Nupe man. Is that the way we are going to develop our country?”
According to him, America is great because it is made up of various cultural groups and ethnic lines have been so weakened that people think only about America.
He stressed that citizens of any country that begin to see themselves through their tribal enclaves cannot go anywhere.