Extracts From GEJ 2015 Speach On Lagos Rally That Nailed APC

Today, I am going to address only a segment of the Nigerian population. I am going to address the people who are voting for the first time, those of you who will attain 18years this year.

Whatever I say, when you go back, call your aunts or call your uncles, your father or your mother, or your cousin, that is at least 60 years old and confirm and ask them what you heard that the Presidential candidate of PDP mentioned in any of the rallies because 2015 elections is about the young people: either you vote and continue to be relevant in Nigeria’s political history or you vote for you to be irrelevant.

Nigeria must move forward, Nigeria is for the youths. Nigeria is not for old people like us. The young generation must redefine this country. We must take this country to where we want it to be. Nobody can push us backwards. The past is past. They have led us backward and backward.

Young Nigerians were doing things fantastically well, they were acting films and these very people were snubbing them, they were playing music and these very people were abusing them. But we are encouraging them and the world has accepted them. Do you want to move forward? ….. Do you want to go backward?

At this point, let me apologize to some Nigerian civil servants who did not receive their salaries in December early enough and I will tell you what happened. I apologize to those families that suffered because we believe that for you to fight corruption; you must take measures, establish and strengthen institutions. You just don’t wake up, enter the street, arrest one person and lock up and show on television and say that you are fighting corruption.

If they had succeeded in fighting corruption, corruption would not have been with us here today. If they had set up structures and especially in today’s modern science using ICT to manage resources, we would not have been talking about corruption today.

If somebody tells you that the best way to fight corruption is to arrest your uncle or father and show him on television, well, you won’t stop corruption, you will even encourage corruption. I used to tell people and I will also address press conferences so that people can ask me direct questions. Armed robbery is still with us, despite the fact that we are shooting (death penalty) armed robbers. Is that stopping armed robbery?

So arresting people and demonstrating on television will not fight corruption, we must set up institutions, strengthen them to prevent people from even touching the money and that is what we are working on and we are succeeding.

They say we are weak because there were some people who took our fathers, our mothers and our uncles while they were abroad put them in a crate and flew them to Nigeria but they were intercepted by superior powers. That blocked Nigerians from even going to Britain at a time and the relationship between Nigeria and Britain… the whole world isolated Nigeria.

They said that is the way to fight corruption. So immediately I suspect your uncle, I can just crate him and throw him into Kirikiri. Is that the way to stop corruption?
If somebody tells you that he will not follow due process… I came in with Yar’Adua and he advocated due process and I stand by due process. Any country that does not abide by the rule of law is a jungle.

Do you want Nigeria to be a jungle society? Immediately I suspect you that you have done something wrong I just ask the police or army to arrest you and throw you into jail. Is that the country you want?

They say to be strong is to jail people indiscriminately for 300 years. Is that where you want to go?
A country is like an industry. It must be managed properly by people who have brain and great ideas upstairs.

I believe that some few years back some young people have not seen trains except when you travel abroad and you have never boarded a train. Now our trains are moving. Can you do that without planning?

In the power sector, we are in Lagos; Egbin power sector got burnt in 2005 and remained so until now when we are fixing it. We have been able to finish the privatization of the power sector. This is an interface period but you already know that the generation capacity is almost double. Can you do that without planning?

This government feels that Nigerians are very dynamic people, very creative, very industrious, very talented in music, arts and business. Many of them do not have money and you know we are almost 200 million in Nigeria and we cannot reach everybody the same day. We came up with the concept of YOUWIN to give grants not loans to young Nigerians that have ideas. If you interview them, some of them are already manufacturing and in the next four to five years, we will be exporting things from this country. And they say we have noplans for the youths? They should come and tell us what plans they have for the youths.

I came up with a special scholarship that you must first of all make a First Class in the university. We have scholarship for everybody but you must first of all make First Class from your university and then we test the best brains and send them to the best 25 universities in the world. Can someone who has no plans for the future of this country do that?

Can somebody who does not think about the Nigerian youth do that?
Do you want to go back to those days when they had no plans for us?

When I came on board as President, I noticed that though in the country and on paper, there is this programme or policy of government that every state must get a Federal government owned university. Out of the 36 states we have, 12 had no federal universities and people were deceiving Nigerians that they were doing something.
I said we must establish these 12 universities in the remaining 12 states, start as small universities and grow and we have done that successfully and they are growing gradually.

You will ask some of those people who are deceiving you now and who hired some people from outside the country to go on social media and tell all kinds of lies, that when they were in power did they build any nursery school for anybody? Ask them, ask them, I say go and ask them.

If they did not build nursery schools for anybody, what did they use our money for? They built prisons or universities for you?

I will build universities for you, I will build secondary schools for you, I will build primary schools for you.

Somebody wakes up and says “O, Nigerian women I am going to give you position.’’ And you ask him when you were a Head of Government, you had a cabinet, I have the list of the cabinet members, there was no one single woman. Not even one in the cabinet.

So Nigerian women, you cast your votes and go back to the kitchen and die there or you cast your votes to liberate yourself.

The Nigerian women must decide where to cast their votes: you vote and go back to the kitchen and die in the kitchen or you cast your votes to liberate yourself. We are ready to liberate all Nigerian women.

Finally, let me tell all of you especially those of you, who want to go to the National Assembly that we just had a national conference. The document from that conference, because of the controversy we have in the present National Assembly, you know how chaotic the present Assembly is, we know that if you bring that document to the Assembly they will dump it.

So we want to present it to the next Assembly. So those people you are sending, if you mean well for this country, you must vote people who can go to the National Assembly, discuss and adopt that document that our leaders have agreed so that this country can move forward.

I stand today in the city of Lagos, in the south west on behalf of the leader of our party, Alhaji Muazu, the Vice President and all the leaders and promise that if you vote the PDP en masse to the National Assembly and to the Presidency, we will adopt that document so that this country will move forward.

That document is to liberate you, we did not influence it, our fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters that are credible came up with it.

Ask them, we did not influence it. I did not ask them to dot any `I’ or cross any `T’ because I have no personal interest. My interest is the Nigerian interest.

You must vote for your liberation, you must vote for your development, you must vote to take Nigeria to the moon. You cannot vote to take Nigeria backward.

Leave us who are half dead to bury our dead.You must vote for the progress of this country, you must vote for the Nigerian youth, you must vote for the Nigerian women. PDP!… POWER!
THANK YOU.