Lai Mohammed: Calling Jonathan Incompetent Is Not Insultive

The All Progressives Congress, APC has refuted
claims the party was fond of insulting President
Jonathan, with the party’s interim National
Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed
challenging anyone who has statements signed
by him where the president was insulted to come forward. Speaking on a radio show, Saturday, in Lagos,
where he addressed issues of national interest
and spoke of his party’s activities and ambitions,
Mohammed said terms like ‘incompetent’ that
the party might have used in describing the
president is a fact and not an insult. He went further to say we were in a democracy and not
an autocratic government, and so there was
freedom of speech, and criticism is allowed.
Stressing his point further, he said, “…or is
Jonathan an oracle who no one can speak to?” He also said the internal crisis of the ruing
People’s Democratic Party, PDP is enough for
the party and the presidency to worry about,
and so the APC is really not talking anymore. He
however expressed fear that the crisis in the
party may distract the president from focusing on governance. Mohammed described the APC as the only party
that has ruled well in states it governs, citing
Lagos, Edo, Osun, Ekiti, Oyo, and Ogun states as
living testimonies. Answering questions on taxation in Lagos,
Mohammed stated people should not be
worried about how much they pay as tax, but
they should rather be worried about what the
government use their money for, saying,
“people don’t want to die, but they want to go to heaven”. A contributor on the Talk show dismissed the
APC as a better political party than the PDP,
calling them birds of a feather. The caller
lamented the extravagance of the ‘so-called’
people’s government by the APC, citing the
purchase of Land Cruiser Jeeps worth N12m each for traditional rulers in Ekiti state as an
example of what he was talking about. In his reaction, Mohammed said, “We must give
some dignity to our traditional rulers. I don’t
think buying a Prado jeep for a traditional ruler
is too much. “Don’t forget that in many of the rural areas,the
responsibility of keeping peace and order lies
very much on the traditional rulers. They are an
integral part of our institution, and they play a
very major role in people living together
peacefully, and I do not see how any government can be hostile to traditional
institutions. I think we are making a mountain
out of a mole hill about a couple of cars bought
for these rulers every three or four years.
That’s not corruption, not in the least. Lai Mohammed also spoke on rumours that the
PDP is plotting the impeachment of Speaker,
House of Representatives, who had been long
seen as sympathetic to the cause of the APC,
calling the Speaker a patriotic Nigeria who
cannot be impeached by the PDP. “He was not put there by the PDP, and so
cannot be removed by them,” Mohammed said.