Posted by By LUCKY NWANKWERE, Abuja on
President Olusegun Obasanjo says the choice of whoever will succeed him in 2007 as President remains the inalienable right of the Nigerian electorate and not his.
President Olusegun Obasanjo says the choice of whoever will succeed him in 2007 as President remains the inalienable right of the Nigerian electorate and not his.
The President, who spoke in a statement signed by his spokeswoman, Mrs. Remi Oyo, and made available to State House correspondents in Abuja on Sunday, said the fuss being made in the media about who would receive his blessing for the top post was needless.
"These rather pointless speculations were carried to a new height of irresponsibility and professional misconduct by the Sunday Tribune of today, which falsely quoted the President as saying that he will never hand over to an enemy of his government," the statement noted.
Obasanjo said that there was absolutely no factual basis therefore for the Sunday Tribune's claim that he had "sworn severally" to "groups of his think-tanks who went to sound him out on his own preference as a successor" that he would "never hand over to any presidential aspirant known to have played the role of an enemy by sabotaging his government".
The statement pointed out that all the quotes attributed to the President in the report were the figments of the "demented imagination of the author and his faceless and in all probability, non-existent "State House sources."
The presidential spokesperson explained that the President recognised that the many significant achievements of his administration would not have been possible without the whole-hearted support and endorsement of the majority of Nigerians.
"He could never, therefore, have described as an 'unappreciative populace," the Nigerians who elected him to office in 1999 and re-elected him in 2003 to consolidate the gains of his first term," the statement said, adding, "Furthermore, President Obasanjo does not consider any Nigerian his enemy and has not described anyone as such in any conversation with anybody."
As the build-up towards the 2007 general elections gathers momentum, Oyo appealed to the media to give greater regard to the observance of the rules and ethics of true journalism by not publishing falsehood as that would unnecessarily heat up the polity.