I Never Offered Tinubu The Position Of Vice President - Pres. Jonathan Says.

President Goodluck Jonathan on Friday said that he never offered former Lagos State governor and national leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Tinubu the opportunity to serve as Vice President in a proposed Interim National Government Punch reports.



Jonathan, who spoke with State House correspondents in Abuja through his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Dr. Reuben Abati, described Tinubu’s claim as absurd and ridiculous.



Tinubu , in a statement by his media office on Thursday March 12, claimed that the recent attacks on his person were because he rejected the offer by Jonathan to serve as the Vice President in an Interim National Government.



He claimed that having refused the offer, the President was looking for ways to take him out either by killing him or getting him arrested based on trumped up charges.



Abati however insisted that the position of Jonathan on the idea of an Interim National Government had remained treasonable.



He said the President had made it clear that he had neither proposed the idea at any forum nor discussed it with anybody.



He added that as a democratically elected President, Jonathan’s ambition could never be to head an ING under whatever circumstances.



The presidential spokesman said Jonathan was going into the March 28 presidential election with the conviction that he had performed well and majority of Nigerians would vote for him massively.



He explained that the President therefore has no reason whatsoever to support such an unconstitutional proposition as ING which would amount to assault on democratic principles.



He said,“If you de-construct the statement that purportedly emanated from the office of Asiwaju Tinubu, you will see again the absurd nature of it.



“The absolutely ridiculous nature of it in the sense that given the configuration of Nigeria, it is not likely, totally impossible to have an ING arrangement in which you will have a southerner as the President and then another southerner as Vice President.



“It is absurd. It is not something that is likely to work given the nature of our politics.



“But the Tinubu camp, putting out that statement, were so much in a hurry to engage in their usual game of deceiving the public of propagandaism of the current electoral process, that the emptiness, the hollowness, the shallowness of their proposition escaped them.”