Goodluck Jonathan, a former president, has expressed his concerns about the forthcoming general election in February.
Jonathan expressed his concern about the negative energy being created in the run-up to the 2023 elections on Monday, January 16, during the commissioning of the 1.15-kilometre Afi-Uko Nteghe Uda bridge on the Etebi-Enwang road in Mbo Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom.
The former president stated that politics of hostility impedes progress when politicians choose to fight, insult, and criticize their opponents rather than sell their ideas to the electorate.
Goodluck 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, is not insulting, 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 kind 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, burn houses, kill 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.”