The President Lied! By Yinka Odumakin

I have not set my eyes on Prof.Funso Aiyejina for about 23 years now but every now and then the sheer musicality of his voice resonates in my ears anytime I flash back to his poetry class.Aiyejina was one of the crop of bright intellectuals at the Literature Depatment of the  Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU),Ile-Ife under whose feet I learned  several years back.The great teachers included :Profs .Biodun Jeyifo,  Ropo Sekoni,Oyin  Ogunba,G.G Darah,Adebayo Williams and a host of others.

Aiyejina's poetry class was an exciting one for me as I looked forward each moment to listen to him sing poetry into our ears.Two poems he sang that would never leave my consciousness are "Letter To Lynda" written by him and Odia Ofeimum's " The Poet Lied".

It was the latter that rushed to my memory as I listened to President Goodluck Jonathan address a media chat on national  television on Sunday night.Under normal circumstance, the word of a president should flow with so much integrity that people would not ordinarily be tempted to cross-check as any holder of such office would not be expected to speak untruth to his countrymen and women.

However, I've learnt to double check whatever the President says ever since he said he was not aware of Article 7(C) in his party constitution until his opponents brought out his signature at the meeting where the provision was approved .I must say though that I was still ready to grant him the indulgence that he could have suffered some amnesia given that the meeting took place about 6 years earlier.

But my bag of indulgence for him became empty when I heard Dr Jonathan say "Nigerians should not forget that long  before the House of Representatives set up its probe I have set up the Ribadu Committee to look into the problems in the oil sector.If I have anything to hide would I  go for Ribadu who is accepted as an anti-corruption giant by Nigerians?"

I could not believe my ears that the President of Nigeria would  manipulate events that occurred early this year to torture our memory and still keep a straight face.Even a toddler would recall that the House of Representatives convened a special session on Sunday,6th January 2012;to deliberate on the fuel subsidy crisis during which it set up the Lawan Farouk Committee to probe the subsidy regime.It took exactly a moment after,with all the mind - boggling revelations from the House probe  for the Petroleum Minister to announce the Nuhu Ribadu Task Force on the petroleum industry .

And shortly after this blatant untruth,one of the panelists asked the president if Nigerians should still trust him in spite of all that have happened in the last one year and he still answered in the affirmative!

Now the big question is how anybody would believe the President when he denied being the director of the Otedola-Farouk opera after telling us that February comes before January and the gap between is "long"?.
I almost passed out when the President admitted that Otedola ,Dangote and co have always been around every PDP president from Obasanjo through Yaradua and to him " but they are not patrons of the ruling party since they are not on our Board of Trustees"

And the big one played out in the course of the interview when two  numbers were displayed for people to call in and ask the president questions.I felt a practical joke was on for a president who struggles with written speeches to now face live questions.Even the questions from the panel which must have been given to him ahead presented their challenges .Where the president was expected to enunciate concrete policy directives,he kept on saying "did you not listen to the minister when he talked on that", "I don't want to contradict the minister","I don't want to have the figures of our debts" and "I'm not the one managing the economy but Ngozi Iweala who has reputation".As if he was saying he lacks what NOI has!

My apprehension that the call-in gesture was a gimmick  was confirmed as I called the two numbers and none was active..I have since called a lot of respected Nigerians who told  me they had a similar experience.Among those who also tried but in vain like me are Prof.Niyi Osundare and Pastor Tunde Bakare.One of the other people I called cracked my ribs when he said " the few calls that made it in could be from Reuben Abati's office".

By and large,it was a punishing task listening to Mr President for two hours Sunday night as he stumbled from one comedy of error to another.Like him saying that he has not declared his asset as a matter of  "principle" and that when he did so as Vice-President it was at the insistence of Yaradua whom he told  they were creating an  "anomalous " situation.He went on the arrogant lane by saying that he would not give a damn if the media talked about his non-declaration of assets till kingdom come. And his parting  shot was "is it my declaration of assets that would stop Boko Haram?".But I didn't hear in two hours talking about  what he is doing to stop Boko Haram even as his June deadline to exterminate the group remains a few days to end!

If anything all I heard him do was setting agenda for Boko Haram when he said "...the same Boko Haram will start attacking mosques to instigate Muslim youths to attack Christians ".

The  most pathetic non-coordination of thought of the night came with the president defending his Brazil trip when Kaduna and Yobe were burning thus :"The day the international community gets to know that the President of Nigeria  could not travel because of Boko Haram,we are finished".

But the  President within the same interview explained that the reason he had yet to visit Damaturu  and Maiduguri ,two hottest flash-points of Boko Haram was because the airport is ill-equipped for his plane to land;and that he could not travel  by helicopter for security reasons.

Now that the international community know that our president who junkets around the world but cannot maintain airports at home  is scared of flying    helicopter in his country for the fear of Boko Haram,what is left of us?

Truth is that our rulers, which include President Jonathan- finished us before Boko Haram !


http://mobile.saharareporters.com/article/president-lied-yinka-odumakin

Another feeble attempt to take merit away from the presidents speech. Why are haters resorting to lies against the president? What did this man do them? Isn't this the same chat I watched and enjoyed? Or are they referring to something different. I heard the president say loudly that he had earlier instructed Aganga to invite international auditors to investigate NNPC. What is a lie about it? You guys should leave Jonathan Jooor!

"...the same Boko Haram will start attacking mosques to instigate Muslim youths to attack Christians "

Evidently, our dear president cares about the way outsiders perceive him than we do. I could recall sometimes last year when Nigerians were criticising him and all he could come up with was "President Obama commended me". What an inane and childish comment!

Bukkyade: Another feeble attempt to take merit away from the presidents speech. Why are haters resorting to lies against the president? What did this man do them? Isn't this the same chat I watched and enjoyed? Or are they referring to something different. I heard the president say loudly that he had earlier instructed Aganga to invite international auditors to investigate NNPC. What is a lie about it? You guys should leave Jonathan Jooor!

Question for you: Was Goldman Sach's ever hired to do any work for Government by the Government of Nigeria? simple Yes/No will suffice.

"The day the international community gets to know that the President of Nigeria  could not travel because of Boko Haram,we are finished"

Evidently, our dear president cares about the way outsiders perceive him than we do. I could recall sometimes last year when Nigerians were criticising him and all he could come up with was "President Obama commended me". What an inane and childish comment!

Bukkyade: Another feeble attempt to take merit away from the presidents speech. Why are haters resorting to lies against the president? What did this man do them? Isn't this the same chat I watched and enjoyed? Or are they referring to something different. I heard the president say loudly that he had earlier instructed Aganga to invite international auditors to investigate NNPC. What is a lie about it? You guys should leave Jonathan Jooor!

Please could you list the merits?

and the president lied!

hmnnnn, he prolly didn't mean to lie, I think he only suffered some amnesia.

January/February was a long time to remember which event came 1st.

I could not believe my ears that the President of Nigeria would manipulate events that occurred early this year to torture our memory and still keep a straight face.Even a toddler would recall that the House of Representatives convened a special session on Sunday,6th January 2012;to deliberate on the fuel subsidy crisis during which it set up the Lawan Farouk Committee to probe the subsidy regime.It took exactly a moment after,with all the mind - boggling revelations from the House probe for the Petroleum Minister to announce the Nuhu Ribadu Task Force on the petroleum industry .

So much for truth and intergrity

@bukkyade.. please list what you enjoyed in the chat..

and I would list what I think is bollocks.. then we can compare notes.. its a simple experiment. I do no indulge sycophancy.

Bukkyade: Another feeble attempt to take merit away from the presidents speech. Why are haters resorting to lies against the president? What did this man do them? Isn't this the same chat I watched and enjoyed? Or are they referring to something different. I heard the president say loudly that he had earlier instructed Aganga to invite international auditors to investigate NNPC. What is a lie about it? You guys should leave Jonathan Jooor!

Olodo.

Enough of all this talk! GEJ is a failure and the most incompetent president Nigeria ever produced - how do we get rid of him is the next thing. Or how do we stop him from perceived 2nd term agenda?

GEJ must go!

Bukkyade: Another feeble attempt to take merit away from the presidents speech. Why are haters resorting to lies against the president? What did this man do them? Isn't this the same chat I watched and enjoyed? Or are they referring to something different. I heard the president say loudly that he had earlier instructed Aganga to invite international auditors to investigate NNPC. What is a lie about it? You guys should leave Jonathan Jooor!

GEJ is unfortunate to be president in the information age. This should be a plus for him, not a minus. His predecessors, (all of them failures by the way, excuse Yaradua for ill health) were much luckier. Their failures traveled slowly across the globe.

Deep in my heart, I want GEJ to succeed. At a point during the chat, he said "...perception is everything..." If he really understood that, why does he think that perception of his refusal to publicly declare his assets isn't hurting the way his anti-corruption posture is perceived by the world, especially as his predecessor did it?

On BH, I believe the president has everything at his disposal for intelligence gathering. Are the cars used for suicide bombing purchased and registered in the names of the suicide bombers? Which car shop were they bought from? In whose name was it registered? The CCTV mounted in Abuja, what information has been gleaned from them? Shouldn't an integrated national database be an accelerated priority, as opposed to spending billions on 'questionable security' votes?

It is hard to give the president a passmark, very hard.

Bukkyade: Another feeble attempt to take merit away from the presidents speech. Why are haters resorting to lies against the president? What did this man do them? Isn't this the same chat I watched and enjoyed? Or are they referring to something different. I heard the president say loudly that he had earlier instructed Aganga to invite international auditors to investigate NNPC. What is a lie about it? You guys should leave Jonathan Jooor!

Sorry to ask, are you sick?

Bukkyade: Another feeble attempt to take merit away from the presidents speech. Why are haters resorting to lies against the president? What did this man do them? Isn't this the same chat I watched and enjoyed? Or are they referring to something different. I heard the president say loudly that he had earlier instructed Aganga to invite international auditors to investigate NNPC. What is a lie about it? You guys should leave Jonathan Jooor!

Different strokes for different folks

Once Again, the opposition has gone full circle in a failed bid to doctor the interesting media chat the President had with Nigeians. I have much respect for Yinka Odumakin as an activit. But it remains to be seen how this analyses can ever be said to be flowing from that media chat. I watched the media chat.

First, Yinka proceeded on a faulty assumption that the President was talking about the Ribadu committe set up to monitor our oil revenue. No. What the president clearly said is that while he was an acting president, he had already directed Aganga to invite any globally reputable audit firm to investigate NNPC. The president said this in a bid to clear the air on his alleged plans to kill Lawns' report. He said that even far before the House Probe, he had already taken his own independent step to investigate the oil sector.

Logically too, one of the major reasons for the removal of subsidy was to eliminate the cabal from feeding fat from oil subsidy. So does it make sense when people now reprobate to accuse the president from shielding the same cabal from Farouk.'s hammer? Somehow both the President and the masses have a common enemy in the cabal. The president sought to punish the cabal thru subsidy removal while the masses sought to punish the cabal thru the probes but unfortunately both efforts turned awry.

Secondly, it is not also true that the president could not face live questions. He did face all the questions thrown at him confidently. He responded to the Brasil trip perfectly. He told about ongoing power reforms in summary. He talked about YOUWIN in response to a question by the caller. He explained the reason behind the sack of Azazi. Please let's try to be objective. We must not kill this man because our preferred presidential candidates lost to him.

For God's sake we are a lot better than this....why are using every slightest opportunity to score cheap political points? "Unease lies the head that wears the crown".

President Jonathan is not a perfect man, he has his own flaws as an individual and as a president...all these problems we are seeing now took over 50yrs to accumulate...will they vanish in one night or 1yr?

Most of these people calling for the head of the president are not able to hold their homefronts together and ur small office is full of shady deals...back yard runs." He who is without sin should cast the first stone".

Let us not pick only the points that suit our myopic vies and throw out the rest. Mr President said clearly that when he became the president, he directed that the minister of finance should get an independent auditor to audit all the ministeries where the FGN was spending big. He mentioned NNPC,PTDF,ND etc. All these apparently commenced before the subsidy saga.

My opinion is that Yinka Odunmakin and co should fortify the ACN and CPC merger so as to present a very formidable opposition against PDP come 2015.

Mr President can do a lot better, yes we know...but we need to support him.

Bukkyade: Another feeble attempt to take merit away from the presidents speech. Why are haters resorting to lies against the president? What did this man do them? Isn't this the same chat I watched and enjoyed? Or are they referring to something different. I heard the president say loudly that he had earlier instructed Aganga to invite international auditors to investigate NNPC. What is a lie about it? You guys should leave Jonathan Jooor!

let me refresh ur memory,when d president to reduce d price,he said in a televised broadcast he will set up a panel to probe nnpc and he later set a ribadu cmmtte in early feb. Dhouse started inviting oil coys to d floor since mid january. So bukkyade do u have amnesia too?
The president said he wont increase d price of fuel until april.he did on d 1st of january.the president says i will use one term.now he is silent on d issue of 2015. The president claim there is no zoning yet begged d house to vote mulikat as speaker in order to follow d partys zoning formular.
He is a patholigical liar and hypo just like u are bukkyade. We dont need ur likes on NL

agog: just heard that Olusola Saraki is dead. how true is this house?

Where did you hear this one?

Bukkyade: Another feeble attempt to take merit away from the presidents speech. Why are haters resorting to lies against the president? What did this man do them? Isn't this the same chat I watched and enjoyed? Or are they referring to something different. I heard the president say loudly that he had earlier instructed Aganga to invite international auditors to investigate NNPC. What is a lie about it? You guys should leave Jonathan Jooor!

Bukkyade = Mekusnwa. Is it a coincidence that both ID were registered same day? Is it a coincidence that both "users" are having a "brief" for GEJ on NL?

People should should really have a rethink, because maybe you called the phone lines and they didn't go through. It now means that they are fake or sum thing, do you know how many people would have been calling that line at the same time? And the people you shared your view with on the phone call issue are enemies of the administration and I expected nothing less than what you have just said from them. And these also mean that you are one of them, so keep criticizing my brother, as the president said "it is now a big business to criticize the government". But, note you that if any of you and your sponsors should be given this same opportunity to serve our nation that you would fail in all sectors.

I sincerely regret supporting Goodluck Ebele Jonathan.
Nigeria.......

Jonathan instigate corruption,ΨåS̤̈̊ he a lecturer or what?...,̶̷̩̥̊͡ђã†̥ will happen if this man is øŋ †ђε seat 4 8yrs?

There's no end to the lies that these people that supported defeated Buhari/Bakare ticket can tell. BUNCH OF LIARS. We watched the media chat and they should not come to confuse us. I was impressed with the presidents answer on most of the issues except few. His trip to Brasil is justified. No country in the world will decline to meet up with its international engagements because of sponsored acts of terrorism. It's not done. And I'm sure that the same people who are making an issue over this would hve turned round to crticise the president for failing to represent Nigeria in the gathering of world leaders due to Boko haram. The president educated me on his power reforms and explained that the new tariffs were reviewed in such a way that the rich will be paying higher to subsidize it for the low income class. Beautiful idea. He equally talked about his plans to carry on the second round of YOUWIN EMPOWERNMENT programme on merit.

Kobojunkie:

Question for you: Was Goldman Sach's ever hired to do any work for Government by the Government of Nigeria? simple Yes/No will suffice.

Once again Miss Junkie, you like I always tell you, are not all knowing.
Mr President of course ordered Segun Aganga to audit both NNPC and PPPRA when Aganga was Finance Minister. How do you think they came about the KPMG report, Madam oversabi?
Everyone has come to know you as unneccessarily argumentative and combative, the premise of your arguments are always petty and dumb. What has Goldman Sach got to do with if Mr President actually lied about starting the investigation of NNPC or not?
Bukky did not even make mention of Goldman Sachs, why are you so annoyingly arrogant to a stupifying degree? Abeg, let better people comment jare, oversabi numbskull.

dedeike: Once Again, the opposition has gone full circle in a failed bid to doctor the interesting media chat the President had with Nigeians. I have much respect for Yinka Odumakin as an activit. But it remains to be seen how this analyses can ever be said to be flowing from that media chat. I watched the media chat. First, Yinka proceeded on a faulty assumption that the President was talking about the Ribadu committe set up to monitor our oil revenue. No. What the president clearly said is that while he was an acting president, he had already directed Aganga to invite any globally reputable audit firm to investigate NNPC. The president said this in a bid to clear the air on his alleged plans to kill Lawan's report. He said that even far before the House Probe, he had already taken his own independent step to investigate the oil sector. Logically too, one of the major reasons for the removal of subsidy was to eliminate the cabal from feeding fat from oil subsidy. So does it make sense when people now reprobate to accuse the president from shielding the same cabal from Farouk.'s hammer? Somehow both the President and the masses have a common enemy in the cabal. The president sought to punish the cabal thru subsidy removal while the masses sought to punish the cabal thru the probes but unfortunately both efforts turned awry. Secondly, it is not also true that the president could not face live questions. He did face all the questions thrown at him confidently. He responded to the Brasil trip perfectly. He told about ongoing power reforms in summary. He talked about YOUWIN in response to a question by the caller. He explained the reason behind the sack of Azazi. Please let's try to be objective. We must not kill this man because our preferred presidential candidates lost to him.

oga pls listen to urself......d president said he had already directed aganga to invite an international audit firm to probe nnpc.so my question..were they invited? Did they come? Did they probe nnpc? And who did they submit d report to? And were d report made public b4 now? An why is president just saying it now?
Srr i like ebele as aperson but he is unfit to captain my class in secondary school.he lacks everything,most important integrity.

@agog: wie did u get ur info abt olusola saraki, pls ur source?

pcicero:


Please could you list the merits?

Someone tht has cement inside his skull

Can we move to Jokes section. Thats where we see reality