President Goodluck Jonathan today in Maiduguri , Borno State, said it is primitive and a myth to say polio vaccines causes infertility in women .
The President who is on a state visit, took a swipe at an unnamed Professor whom he said “is busy instigating crises saying that if you immunize children, to make sure that they do not have polio, it will lead to infertility”
The President who warned that anyone who attacked security operatives would not be spared, jocularly described former Borno State Governor, Ali Modu Sherrif as a ‘friend’ of the late Boko Haram leader, Yusuf Mohammed.
Jonathan who traced the genesis of the sect’s mayhem to shortly after death of Yusuf said “When Yusuf was killed, a friend of Governor Sherriff, that was the beginning of the problem.”
On the campaign against polio vaccines that has claimed lives of health workers in the north he said “There is one professor that is saying this … Where did he learn that from? From which research work? .
And look at polio, only few countries Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Are we not ashamed that all the countries around us, Cameroun, Niger, Chad, Benin, none has it.”
“At the international level, when I go there, I’m ashamed but everybody say, please President of Nigeria, do not import polio to the neighbouring countries. And a professor is busy instigating the people that immunization will cause infertility in women. If there is a way of withdrawing professorship such from someone such professorship should be withdrawn from him because I don’t see how that person can describe himself as a professor”, he said.
He wondered how such a person should be called a professor saying him as a person would not address him as such.
On the allegation that the Joint Task Force, JTF, are in the habit of killing innocent persons whenever they lose a personnel, President Goodluck warned that, he would not stand aside and see that security personnel are gunned down in the course of performing their legitimate duties.
“Let me frank with you because the analogy that when one soldier is killed, soldiers come and kill scores of people. We have always been admonishing that. We always tell the soldiers to conduct themselves because they are doing internal security jobs that ordinarily soldiers are not supposed to be involved. But because of the caliber of weapons the militants are using, police alone cannot stand.
“Government will never sit down quiet and wait for insurgents and some people to take arms and take parts of this country. Never. Whether it is in the Niger Delta but I have been giving directives to the JTF services that one soldier is killed in Niger delta. I don’t want to hear that one soldier is killed the South-East kidnappings. I don’t want to hear that one soldier is killed in Borno state or any part of this country”.
He further stated that the soldiers have been warned to conduct themselves in accordance with democratic practices reiterating that, “I cannot preside over this country as a president and my security officers are killed. These people leave their families, stay on the road and the bush so that we will sleep. And I will not want to hear that one of them is killed. So nobody should make an analogy and want to celebrate that one soldier is killed. We will not allow or celebrate the death of one soldier, anywhere in this country. We will not and I repeat, we will not accommodate that”,