President Goodluck Jonathan on Thursday declared that the leader of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), Henry Okah, actually planned to assassinate him on 1st October 2010.
Okah is in prison in South Africa for allegedly leading a group that detonated a bomb close to the Eagle Square venue of the Independence Day celebration in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital city in 2010.
The blast had resulted in the death of 12 people while the President said he was whisked away to safety by his security details.
When the blast happened, Jonathan had absolved MEND of complicity in the act saying MEND could not have been the group behind the explosion.
MEND had in the last two days endorsed Buhari. In another statement on Thursday, MEND denied any link with the All Progressives Congress (APC) but said its choice of Buhari is because Jonathan had failed his state, his zone and the country.
Reacting for the first time since the incident, Jonathan, who spoke at his campaign flag off in Lagos, said he saw a headline in one of the newspapers, saying MEND had dumped him.
“The leader of MEND is Henry Okah, Okah is in prison in South Africa, not even in Nigeria, where they could have said I influenced it,” he said.
“He is in prison because he wanted to assassinate me by bombing Eagle Square. The intelligence service got the information and I was driven into the Eagle Square in a hurry. Now he is endorsing some people. Is that the kind of country you want?”
“Do you want Nigeria to go backward or forward?”
He said because of his transformation of the country, Nigerians are now interested in politics and governance.
“Only yesterday, I directed INEC to make sure that all Nigerians get their voter cards,” he revealed.
“Before 2011, people were just voting themselves into office, there was nothing like voter cards. And I also want to advise the young people here, particularly the first-time voters, you must vote wisely. Some people want to take Nigeria backward; is that what you want?
“Do you want to go back to the era when there was no freedom, when your uncles were being jailed anyhow?”
He said Buhari believes that one major way to fight corruption is to get people arrested and show them on television.
“So immediately I suspect your uncle, I would just pick him up and throw him into Kirikiri. Is that how to fight corruption? Is that what you want?” he asked the crowed.
“They say they want to jail all their enemies and lock them up, but me, I have no enemies to fight,” he said.
