Different comments have continued to trail the Senate’s Minority Leader Senator Abaribe’s call for President Muhammadu Buhari resignation over his failure to tackle insecurity in the country.
During the plenary session on Wednesday, Senator Abaribe while speaking on a motion on rising security challenges in the country, said:
“Nigerians will go to the government and ask the government to resign because they did not elect the chief of staff, the police IG, service chiefs and others.
“Nigerians voted a government into power. We are going with stones to stone them now because they have failed.”
The Senator’s call for Buhari to resign has since generated different comments with the most scathing of such expectedly coming from Garba Shehu who described the Senator’s call for the President’s resignation as foolish.
On today’s #throwbackThursday, odunews.com takes you back to some of the political leaders who have called for the resignation of former President, Goodluck Jonathan over the rising insecurity in the country.
President Muhammadu Buhari
President Muhammadu Buhari as an oppositing in 2013 was very vocal about his call for the resignation of Goodluck Jonathan over insecurity.
Speaking to newsmen in his residence in Daura town on May 21, 2013, Buhari said the issue of security is a fundamental duty of any responsible government, but Jonathan failed to protect the lives and the properties of Nigerians since he assumed power.
‘Jonathan should vacate and give way to competent hand to govern the country’, he said.
According to him, the then president failed to perform his primary function of securing Nigerians.
He had said: “When the Niger Delta militants started their activities in the south-south, they were invited by the late President Umaru Yar’adua. An aircraft was sent to them and their leaders met with the late president in Aso Rock and discussed issues. They were given money and a training scheme was introduced for their members. But when the Boko Haram emerged in the north, members of the sect were killed.
“And when the police failed to address the insurgency, soldiers were invited and they captured the Boko Haram leader, Muhammad Yusuf alive and handed him over to police. But Yusuf was eventually killed, his in-law too was killed and their houses were demolished.
“In Bama and Baga towns, military personnel were reported to have been engaged in extortion and sometimes raping of women. And because a soldier was killed in Baga the whole town was sacked by the military. This is not the best way the military should have acted when they were sent to restore law and order in a town. How can a responsible government allow its people to be killed in this way.
“The soldiers are not expected to go and sack a town because one of them is killed. They are expected to capture the culprits for prosecution. After all the soldiers are not meant to tackle internal crisis but when it is necessary they should act professionally. Whoever is sent to protect people should also protect their integrity.”
Nasir El-Rufai
The former Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, and present Governor of Kaduna state, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, also called for the resignation of ex-President, Goodluck Jonathan over failure to tackle the terrorist sect Boko Haram.
El-Rufai while speaking to Vanguard Newspaper on August 8, 2012, asked Jonathan to quit if he could not solve the growing security threats to lives and property in the country
“Why is it that only President Jonathan cannot solve Nigeria’s security problem?… If he cannot do the job for which he was elected to do, he should consider going home. No president has ever sought the help of the ordinary people in tackling security problems in this country,” he said.
Bola Ahmed Tinubu
The All Progressives Congress National Leader was vocal about his call for the resignation of President Goodluck Jonathan.
During a political rally in Kwara state on November 5, 2014, the ex-Lagos Governor called for the resignation of Goodluck Jonathan.
Bola Tinubu, slammed Jonathan for allowing the Boko Haram terrorists to seize parts of the nation’s territory, stating that he ought to have resigned because of the development.
He said, ‘’I saw the sea of refuges and the lies coming from Jonathan’s administration. They have exhibited failure, lack of capacity, vision, creativity; the lie of yesterday is what they repeat today and it is what they will repeat tomorrow. They are lying to you. They are lying about the security, toying about the security of this country. I don’t have time to explain the logic of their lies.’’
‘’If you control the armed forces and you are the Commander-in-Chief of the armed of the federal republic, why should any part of this country be under occupation?
“And you give us excuses every day. In any civilised country, Jonathan should have resigned. But if he will not resign he should wait for our broom we will sweep them away.’’
Aminu Tambuwal
Although now a member of the Peoples Democratic Party, Aminu Tambuwal was one of the All Progressive Congress leaders who ‘aggressively’ called for Jonathan’s resignation over different challenges bedeviling the country during Jonathan’s tenure.
Speaking at the same rally as the APC National Leader in Kwara, Tambuwal said:
“I call on President Jonathan to resign from office because of all the mis-governance and the untold hardship Nigerians are presently passing through,” he said. If he fails to do that it is therefore incumbent on us as a people to turn out en-masse and vote out Goodluck Ebele Jonathan come 2015. That will bring peace, progress and development of Nigeria.’’
He continued, “I am sure that (Kwara) state will provide such leadership to the extent that we shall deliver this country to the government at the centre to APC,” he said in Ilorin, Kwara state capital.
‘’By voting APC at the centre you will be voting for prosperity and eradication of poverty. What we are witnessing today in Nigeria is not governance, but mis-governance. We are witnessing a system that does not have the interest of the people of this country at heart.”
