Subsidy: Jonathan praises Buhari's principled stand - ' Says Boko Haram is a temporary set back

President Goodluck Jonathan yesterday praised General Mohammadu Buhari, his major opponent in the 2011 presidential election for not playing politics with the issue of subsidy removal unlike other politicians in the country.The President made the remark during the presidential dialogue with the Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of global corporations at the 17th Nigeria Economic Summit in Abuja with the theme, 'Attracting foreign direct investments through global partnership.'The President said that prior to government's decision on the removal of subsidy, he knew a lot of players in the country who were against subsidy but who quickly changed their stand when the government made the pronouncement.'We are in the part of the world, Africa, developing countries where we play politics with everything even issues of development. I know some key players, some key actors who before this time were against subsidy but now, they have brought politics into it. The same people are now speaking from a different side of their mouths.'That's why I can now appreciate people like General Buhari, who in terms of politics was my major competitor, he is one person who has come up clearly that the issue of subsidizing petroleum products is a fraud. He is not playing politics with development and the future of Nigeria but not everybody will have the mind like General Buhari.'Many people, I don't want to call names, now see it as an opportunity to bring down the government and under that situation, you must take pains to explain it to the ordinary Nigerians both students, the youth, market people,' the President said.He also said that though the people know the truth, but for political reasons, they will rather misinform the people, adding that deregulation only serves the interest of the elite who have 10 jeeps to fuel and not the ordinary poor masses.The President also assured the global and Nigerian business community that the issue of Boko Haram is a temporary one which will soon be over, adding that 'anybody who does not want to come and invest in Nigeria now because of the incident of Boko Haram, will really regret it because this is very temporary.''If people begin to think that Nigeria will continue to be a place where people will manufacture and come and dump, I think the days of dumping are going. I will advice that the global players should look at the economy and see areas where they will come and invest.'Yes, we have challenges in terms of power but security, there is no country that is completely safe even as powerful as America is, they don't sleep, they monitor and watch. It's just that terrorist activities are new in Nigeria,' he said.
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