Gowon stated that Yar’adua had achieved huge milestones for Nigeria in his brief time in office, including providing amnesty to Niger Delta terrorists in order to restore the country’s economy.
A former Head of State, Gen Yakubu Gowon (retd), has claimed that the sudden death of former president, Umaru Musa Yar’adua, was what stopped Nigeria from becoming a better country.
Gowon mentioned that Nigeria would have been a better country if President Yar’adua had completed his tenure while speaking during a first President Umaru Musa Yar’adua international leadership conference in Abuja.
Yar’adua became president in 2007, but in 2010, he died as a result of ill- health.
Gowon stated that Yar’adua had achieved huge milestones for Nigeria in his brief time in office, including providing amnesty to Niger Delta terrorists in order to restore the country’s economy.
He regretted that, despite Yar’adua’s admission that the process that led to his election as president in 2007 was defective and the formation of the Justice Muhammed Uwais Committee for Electoral Reforms, subsequent administrations failed to carry out his idea.
Gowon said, “He was a decent man; a man with absolute integrity. He was an honest man. He did very well and he has to be remembered. He was so honest that he said the process that brought him to power was not right. And he set up a committee. But it was not followed by successive leaders.
“However, I believe that one day, we shall have a solution. He was honest and sincere in dealing with any problem, and he was incorruptible. You can not blame him for corruption; he was clean. His various activities including the amnesty programme that he brought to the Niger Delta ensured our economy was protected.
“His illness and death, I believe if God had allowed him to complete his years in service, I believe Nigeria would have been better. A lot of things would have been better because he meant well for the country. So continue that love for the country and love for one another to make Nigeria great.”
Gowon also condemned the country’s recent insecurity and urged the government and security services to apprehend those responsible for violent deaths, abductions of schoolchildren in the North, and kidnapping for ransom in other regions of the country.
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