2023: Jonathan Expresses Worry Over Forthcoming General Elections, Give Reasons

With just 40 days to the 2023 general elections, the former President Goodluck Jonathan, has said that he is somehow worried about the forthcoming general elections.

Jonathan expressed his concerns over the elections while speaking during the commissioning of the 1.15 kilometre Afi-Uko Nteghe Uda brigde on Etebi-Enwang road, in Mbo Local government area of Akwa Ibom State, on Monday.

According to Daily Trust, the former President reportedly said he was worried over the negative energy that the forthcoming elections had generated, noting that the politics of bitterness hindered development.

Jonathan said, “I’m a bit worried by the negative energy generated ahead of the 2023 elections. We have noticed a level of bitterness in our politics that does not bring development and I plead with politicians that marketing is about marketing your ideas. Politics is not about fighting; it is not insulting; it is not about abusing.

“We have been reading in the newspapers and social media of how billboards of Presidential candidates, governorship candidates are pulled down and I believe by hoodlums, but sometimes, they say some governments even support those kinds of things.

“If you are a part of the team doing that, then know that you are among the unfortunate miscreants, virus or pathogen that is really decomposing our democracy. Please stop doing that; but in all these, I believe the security services have a lot to do.

“I believe anybody who commits a crime should not be covered under politics. Arson is arson and is never status bound, so somebody who commits a crime, burns houses, kills people, the record must be kept, and whatever the investigation is completed, such people should be prosecuted; that is the only way people would stop doing this.

“But if people commit criminal offences and walk away, then, of course, other people would be encouraged to do same. So security services in Nigeria have a lot to do, they must not spare any criminal.”

Jonathan, who conceded defeat to President Muhammadu Buhari in 2015 general elections therefore called on politicians across the country to market their politics with ideas rather than fight, insult and abuse their opponents.