The Federal Government yesterday claimed that those heaping abuses and insults on President Goodluck Jonathan and members of his administration were calling for a military coup.

Supervising Minister of Defence and Minister of Information, Mr. Labaran Maku, made the claim at the third annual lecture and award ceremony of the Nigerian Pilot newspapers and Nigerian NewsWorld magazine held in Abuja.

The minister, who represented President Jonathan at the ceremony, warned that the insults and abuses could cast aspersions on the office of the President, his administration and government officials and give the military enough grounds for an unnecessary interruption of the civil government.

Maku told the gathering, which attracted eminent Nigerians amongst whom were state governors, lawmakers and top politicians, that they should remember the circumstances under which former President Shehu Shagari was removed from office in 1983.

Stressing that Shagari was wrongly overthrown; he said that that military interruption of the constitutional authority was caused by such actions as currently engaged in by some politicians in the country.

“When Shehu Shagari was overthrown in 1983, there was a lot of noise that government was not doing anything,” he said. Maku noted that those who peddled the falsehood were actually not interested in the development programmes that the administration of Shagari was executing, such as the Ajaokuta Steel project, which was the effort of that administration.

“When Shehu Shagari was overthrown in 1983, there was a lot of noise that government was not doing anything,” he said. Maku noted that those who peddled the falsehood were actually not interested in the development programmes that the administration of Shagari was executing, such as the Ajaokuta Steel project, which was the effort of that administration.

He added that those who were insulting President Jonathan were doing so, not because they were not seeing what he had achieved, but because of their selfish ambitions in 2015. “The abuses and insults have nothing to do with performance.

It has everything to do with ambition; if I pull down a governor, I will become the next governor,” he added. Maku said this was true given that this administration had built “an unprecedented 10 power plants in three years, 32 major roads already, dredging of the River Niger, increased the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the country tremendously, which is acknowledged world over, as well as other key development projects and infrastructures that are still being provided.

•Text excerpted from National Mirror. Photo shows President Jonathan.

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