Nigeria’s President-elect, Goodluck Jonathan has slammed foreign media organizations for portraying Nigeria as a country embroiled in clashes based on ethnicity and religious divisions.
Jonathan in a statement through his media spokesman, Ima Niboro, condemned foreign media reports that portrayed the Presidential polls as having been characterised by polarisation along the “Muslim North” and the “Christian South,” with the North voting against him and the South backing him.
“This is not correct, and those that are being led down this path only risk pandering to an ancient and outdated stereotype of ethnic and religious divisions in Nigeria.
“The current reality, as vividly shown by the detailed results of the Presidential election, is that Nigerians proved that they have moved beyond divisive and retrogressive sectional politics.
“It is a verifiable fact that millions of Muslim Northerners voted to give (Jonathan) a truly national mandate to continue in office. He won in Adamawa and Taraba States in the North East, and Nasarawa in the North Central.
“He got over one million votes, which equate to 46 per cent of the valid votes in Kaduna State, and also led the polls in such states as Plateau, Kwara, and Kogi, all of which have sizeable Muslim populations.
“Jonathan also got over 30 per cent of the votes in the largely Muslim states of Jigawa, Sokoto, Kebbi, and Niger.
“It is therefore quite unhelpful to state that the country is divided along Muslim/Christian lines when millions of Northern Muslims voted to endorse the candidacy of Jonathan.
“The President’s pan-Nigeria mandate is a thing of joy to the vast majority of Nigerians, and it is unnecessary to sully it with sectional interpretations due to a lack of understanding of the sometimes complex demographics of this great nation.”