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Nigeria's ex-president Goodluck Jonathan accuses Akufo-Addo of mocking his country

The ex-Nigerian president made the accusation when he was commissioning a flyover in the Nigerian state of Ekiti.

He quoted president Akufo-Addo as saying 'Ghana is not like Nigeria where cattle roam on the streets' as well as making negative remarks about Nigeria's currency.

He said: "He (Ghanaian President) said Ghana is not like Nigeria where cattle roam the streets. At another occasion in the United Kingdom, he made scathing remarks about Nigeria’s currency.

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“I feel ashamed as a former President that the president of a neighbouring country used Nigeria as negative examples.

"If a neighbouring African president will use Nigeria to make negative examples, then we as leaders must know certain things are wrong in the country. That means we as leaders must change the way we do things.

"The former President, therefore, called on Nigerian leaders to show serious concern, noting that many things had gone wrong in the country.

Mr Jonathan was apparently referring to President Akufo-Addo's keynote address at the Oxford African Conference in London, United Kingdom, where he said Nigeria had a thriving economy in the 1980s.

In his speech, president Akufo-Addo said: "For most of you in the audience today, it is probably before your time, but in the late 1970s up to the mid- 1980s, as a result of the discovery of considerable petroleum deposits, Nigeria was booming. It was the place to be. We Ghanaians, who were going through very difficult times then, would arrive at Heathrow Airport, and be herded into a cage to be subjected to the full third degree by Immigration , and we would look on as our Nigerian cousins would be waved through, with a ‘welcome sir’ and a ‘welcome madam."

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"The newspaper headlines in this country were full of Nigerians leaving or forgetting bundles of money in taxis and telephone booths. Nigerians were the preferred tenants for those who had apartments to let. You could stop by any Thomas Cook shop on any High Street in this country and buy or sell Naira, the Nigerian currency, and you could do the same in New York, and I suspect in many other Western country cities."

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