"Jonathan shedding crocodile tears over divisions"

Abuja - The All Progressives Congress (APC) has said accused President Goodluck Jonathan of a hypocritical show of sorrow with his lamentation the country had become more divided along religious and ethnic lines than ever.

The opposition alleged Jonathan was thus the most divisive leader in the country’s history.

“Mr President, there is no point being sanctimonious about an issue for which you bear the most responsibility. You are the most divisive leader in the history of Nigeria, having ceaselessly exploited the country’s fault lines for political gains,” the opposition party said in a statement its National Publicity Secretary, Lai Mohammed, issued in Abuja on Thursday.

The main opposition party said the President’s belated lamentation was aimed at “pulling the wool over the eyes of Nigerians” with a view to extracting undeserved political gains, especially a few weeks before next month’s elections.

“Where was President Jonathan when his spokespersons and party members sought to pit Christians against Muslims by labeling the country’s main opposition party, the APC, as an Islamic Party? Where was President Jonathan when his spokespersons and party members sought to portray all adherents of a particular faith as terrorists? Not once did this President call his loquacious and sycophantic supporters to order when they were denigrating people of other tribes, calling them unprintable names.”

APC alleged Jonathan did not call his supporters to order when they were threatening to bring the country down if he was not re-elected.

“President Jonathan himself led the divisive band by tagging the leaders of a whole people ‘rascals’, just because people dared to protest against his administration’s policies. A man who got a pan-Nigerian mandate turned himself into a tribal leader, running a government that excludes a critical mass of the nation’s demography and pigeon-holing himself into an ethnic cocoon.”

The ruling People’s Democratic Party had not commented on the allegations at the time of publication.

Posted by Donatus Joshua at 12:04