Buhari’s persecution spree, vengeance mission caused recession — Jonathan

Former President Goodluck Jonathan has said the country’s recession was caused by the “persecution spree and vengeance mission” adopted by President Muhammadu Buhari’s government following 2015 general elections.

Jonathan’s assertion is contained in his book: “My Transition Hours” which was unveiled to Nigerians this week in Abuja.

The former president, who dismissed President Buhari’s the claims of inheriting empty treasury as “a blatant lie”, described the recession as “self-inflicted injury” caused by misplaced priorities.

“This is because the Fourth Republic took off in 1999 with crude oil selling at $20 per barrel and a GDP growth at 0.58%, according to National Bureau of Statistics figures. Yet the economy maintained a steady growth from that year, peaking at 15.33% in 2012 when average crude oil price was about $25. It is also instructive that the oil and gas sector constitute about 11% of our GDP. There had to be a wider causative factor than just the fall in world crude oil prices,” he wrote in the book.

“It also amounts to standing facts on their head to continuously claim that recession was caused by so called mindless looting. The truth is that the opposition, in a bid to undo our government, became its own undoing when it got to power, because of the burden of justifying deliberate misrepresentations,” he added.

On corruption perceptions in his government, Jonathan said despite the “blackmail” his administration remained committed to combating it in a systematic way using technology within the context of rule of law, adding that he focused on strengthening public institutions and law enforcement agencies “rather than media hype or arresting and parading suspected offenders on televisions.”

He listed some of the tools he used as the Treasury Single Account (TSA), the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS), the Bank Verification Number (BVN) and the e-wallet for the fertilizer subsidy.

Jonathan also corrected what he termed the mischievous claim that he said ‘stealing is not corruption’. He explained that he expounded the phrase from the comment of former Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Dahiru Musdapher (now deceased), who in explaining what he has done at the Supreme Court to speed up corruption trials during a meeting he summoned with heads of courts from the six geo-political zones and the legislature on how to fast track corruption cases, said he realized that 70 percent of cases referred to as corruption cases in the court were crimes of stealing.