While delivering his valedictory speech at the special thanksgiving and
farewell service organized by Aso Villa Chapel yesterday May 17th,
President Jonathan asked for forgiveness from those who might have felt
offended by any of the moves his government made, stating that such
moves were not intended to deliberately hurt anyone. He said no human
institution is ever perfect. He urged everyone to pursue work towards a
better Nigeria even as they leave government positions.
"No system is perfect. Every human system must have an element of
imperfection. For the period of eight years that we have been here. I
will take the period as a block because my transition from VP to
President was gradual and complicated. It was intertwined so you cannot
actually draw the line. Because when the President was challenged within major health
issues, I was running the country for sometimes even before the doctrine
of necessity made me as acting president. Then I took over at first and
conducting the 2011 election I won and I had to run my full four years
as an elected president. So for the eight that one has been there, definitely one is not
perfect. We have certainly done things that probably we wouldn’t have
done that way, but we didn’t do things deliberately. So for those who we
have offended it was not deliberate, it was circumstances of the
office. So we also plead that those people should forgive, we think we have
done our best. You can do your best and your friends may misunderstand
you. Today we are talking about leaving, it is only God that knows why
things go the way they do.We came in as Vice President and my wife, today we are leaving as
the former president and former First Lady. We have achieved it through
you. Let me specifically thank the chaplain, the clergymen, the pastors
and their wives. For the past eight years we have every reason to be thankful to God.
Every individual has his/her own calling. I also believe that people
who take over political leadership have their own callings to do
specific things. No one, head of a government, be it at the national
level or the sub- regional levels can do every thing. But when you leave, you will want to do something to show that yes I
was here. The chaplain has said that nothing is perfect, if you wait
for perfection, you cannot achieve anything. Ordinarily 24th of May would haven been the last Service here. But
that 24th, we will all go to the National Christian Centre for the
inauguration service. So for me and my wife, this is our last day of
worship here. Though we are leaving as president and First Lady, but we have not
left you, because we are still in this country, we will continue to
interact one way or the other, probably along the line we may even come
closer. I believe some of you may even come closer, and even do more
meaningful things together when we leave office. I don’t really believe that it is only in government that you can do
thing, even outside government you do a lot of things. The richest
people in the world don’t even serve in government. Dangote has never
been in government, so you don’t need to be in government to be rich.
Bill Gates has not been in government. So outside government a lot of
things happen, it is for us to be committed and continue to be focus. Me
and my wife really love all of you.”he said
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