Nigeria not improving on anti-corruption index - Jonathan

The national secretary of the PDP, Ben Obi, while speaking at the party's non-elective national convention in Abuja on Saturday, August 12, 2017 said the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has destabilised the "solid foundation" PDP laid in 16 years.

Leaders of the PDP, including former President Goodluck Jonathan; its chairman, national caretaker committee, Senator Ahmed Makarfi and Delta State governor who was the chairman of the Convention Planning Committee, Senator Ifeanyi Okowa, had predicted a return of the party to power in 2019.

A source in the PDP said; "The secret discussions are ongoing with a wing of the leadership of the PDP and this has encouraged the former vice-president to start consultations with critical leaders in the northern and southern parts of the country". I believe in the PDP. It is hard to beat us; you can not beat us.

The statement angered some APC members and supporters like the director general of Voice of Nigeria (VoN), Osita Okechukwu, who attacked Jonathan and accused him of creating more avenues for corrupt practices in the country.

He said, "As a human institution we can not claim to be ideal, but obviously as a political party, our accomplishments up till 2015 are clear for everybody to see".

"God wants us to celebrate in the PDP, that's why there is no rain".

"Today, neither did we see the refineries nor the billions of dollars at a time Nigeria Excess Accounts hovered around $17 billion. There is ample evidence to show that our party has indeed proved to be a party of vision and accomplishment".

He wished them success in their new party. "We succeeded in doing that because of the leverage and autonomy we gave to INEC", he said. We shall not disappoint you.

"Let us not forget that the great floods of 2012 were a major calamity that damaged homes and farmlands on the plains of River Niger and Benue".

"Mr Omokri said Transparency International in arriving at its decision took note of the Jonathan administration's e-wallet system that cut out the corruption in Nigeria's fertilizer procurement system, the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) which weeded out 50,000 ghost workers from the Federal civil service, the cashless policy and the fact that the Jonathan government promptly fired two ministers (Professor Barth Nnaji and Stella Oduah) mentioned in corruption scandals".

"But despite the devastating effects of this natural disaster, there were no food shortages or arbitrary increase in prices, because of what we were able to accomplish with our agriculture transformation agenda, which considerably boosted food production".

"I learnt that some people said that if the PDP had remained in power beyond 2015, the economy would have been worse". This couldn't have been the case, because we had a sound economic team in place managing the economy.

"If we say that we rekindled hope in our country and regained worldwide goodwill, it is because we pursued a number of policies and programmes that were not only richly rewarding for our people but were also being copied by many other countries across the globe".