Goodluck & Goodbye: President Jonathan Urges Nigerians To Pray For Buhari

When Christians converged at the National Christian Centre, Abuja, on Sunday to pray for successful transition in the 2015 Presidential Thanksgiving and Inauguration Service. President Goodluck Jonathan urged Nigerians to pray fervently for the incoming administration to enable it succeed and for the peace and unity of the country. He also urged the people to pray for him, his wife and those who served in his administration to be able to live a peaceful and decent life after service.

“I call on you to pray for us who are leaving, members of my family and my administration as we leave. But you should even pray more for the incoming government because we are leaving as private people to manage our private businesses; they are coming in to manage the whole country. 

So they require more prayers because I can make mistakes that will affect me and very few people, but if they make mistake it will affect the whole nation. So I call on all Christians and the religious bodies to pray for the incoming government to succeed. Because all what we want as a nation both Nigerians at home and abroad is for good governance, prosperity, unity and peace. We cannot achieve that without the help of God,’’ he said.

President Jonathan expressed happiness that Christians had converged to celebrate the unity of the country rather than mourn its disintegration.

“We are here not having mass service for mass burial but we are here having service to inaugurate an incoming government,’’ he said, adding that the service was made possible by the prayers of Nigerians. The President said that Nigerians had every reason to be thankful to God because in spite of the challenges, Nigeria had made meaningful progress since 100 years of its amalgamation and 54 years as independent nation.
As a nation, we have all the reasons to be grateful to God. 

Nigeria is relatively young; from the amalgamation in 1914, we are just about 101 years old as a nation and from independence in 1960, we are just about 55 years old as an independent nation. If we compare ourselves with other nations; some of them that have stayed up to 200 years, then of cause, we will know that we are not doing too badly.”

Source: The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN)