'You're ordinary motor park touts': Jonathan blasts ‘senior citizens’ over provocative statements

President Jonathan today came down hard on Nigeria’s ‘senior citizens’ and statesmen who utter provocative statements that threaten the unity of the country, describing them as motor park touts. The President expressed this position when he received a delegation of the Northern Elders Council at the Presidential Villa in Abuja.

He noted that “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?”

Jonathan further said that “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?”
 “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?” 

Jonathan said suggestions that he discriminates against the northern part of the country are false and unfair. He accused some media outlets of mischief in deliberately spreading false information to present a negative impression of his administration