Until ex-president Goodluck Jonathan presented his book, My Transition Hours, who knew the mere act of conceding electoral defeat could be so problematic? The problem? Whether ‘recommending sundry alternatives’, as contained in the book, amounted to advising Dr Jonathan to be intransigent in conceding defeat. Sentry was at the public presentation in Abuja last Tuesday, where Nigeria’s high and mighty congregated to do penance for destroying the second term ambition of a former president whose controversial policies in office has probably and finally been salved by time. That Tuesday was, for a brief and uproarious moment, one of Dr Jonathan’s best moments. But while the presentation was going on, portents were already gathering over some of the book’s contents. A former minister was overheard groaning about how the former president misrepresented him in the book as one of the hawks who were ‘considering sundry alternatives’ rather than lean on Dr Jonathan to concede defeat to the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, Muhammadu Buhari, in the 2015 presidential election. The ex- minister said he felt uncomfortable with aspects of the book before its presentation, but felt it wise to forebear in order not to dampen the enthusiasm of the moment. He would react later to set the records straight, he promised, because he was in fact one of those who advised the president to concede defeat.
But former Justice minister, Mohammed Bello Adoke, was less patient or accommodating. Apprised of that part of the book that deals with the former president’s concession, and having not read the book himself, but learning of what could be interpreted as his nefarious involvement, the former Justice minister reached out immediately to Dr Jonathan to seek clarification. The former president replied him via Twitter that the book contained nothing indicating that anyone tried to pressure him not to concede. Mr Adoke then descended on this newspaper, the only media outfit that extracted a quote from the book relating to the roles played by certain individuals in those frightful, fateful hours.
The former Justice minister, however, reached out to the press a day later to set the records straight, perhaps after confirming that Dr Jonathan actually made the ambiguous statements as this newspaper reported. Sentry was bemused by the former president’s repudiation of a part of his book. Was it that he did not actually pen the book, and had in fact secured the services of a ghost writer? But even if he didn’t, could it be that he did not read the book as scrupulously as he should do before publication, or that he read it half-heartedly and missed all the ambiguities? No one can tell. Or did his recall of the events that overwhelmed him in those catatonic days shortly before and after electoral defeat suffer abrasion? Whatever it was, and from all accounts, the book is going to stir a legion of demons in the coming days and weeks. For, after all, he acknowledged that there were hawks who didn’t want him to concede defeat.
Dr Jonathan himself has already triggered the fallout. On reading this newspaper the morning after the presentation, and feeling downcast that this paper had chosen to draw attention to a critical and controversial part dealing with his concession, the president was overheard to have grumbled about what he termed as this newspaper’s consistent focus on the negatives relating to him. He, however, reserved his animus for one of his trusted aides whom he castigated for not monitoring the reportage on the book presentation, and in particular for trusting the wrong man to ‘organise’ the media coverage for such a sensitive task.
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