Former President Goodluck Jonathan has linked his electoral defeat in the 2015 elections to the former U.S. President Barack Obama and his officials who by their actions indicated that they wanted a Muhammadu Buhari led government in Nigeria.
In an advanced copy of the book, ‘Against the Run of Play – How an incumbent president was defeated in Nigeria,’ written by the Chairman of the THISDAY Editorial Board, Olusegun Adeniyi, Jonathan also revealed to the author that the U.S. government “even brought some naval ships into the Gulf of Guinea in the days preceding the elections”.
The book goes on to reveal how the previous U.S. administration undermined Jonathan’s government’s fight against Islamist insurgents in the North-east in order to weaken his government and make it unpopular.
Speaking on the postponement of the election for two weeks, Jonathan said the Jega-led Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) was being encouraged by the Americans to go ahead with the elections even though about 40 million Nigerians, mostly from the north, had not collected their Permanent Voter’s Card (PVC).
“I was disappointed by Jega because I still cannot understand what was propelling him to act the way he did in the weeks preceding the election,” the former president said.
“As at the first week in February 2015 when about 40 percent of Nigerians had not collected their PVCs, Jega said INEC was ready to conduct an election in which millions of people would be disenfranchised.
“The Americans were encouraging him to go ahead yet they would never do such a thing in their own country. How could we have cynically disenfranchised about a third of our registered voters for no fault of theirs and still call that a credible election?.
“The interesting thing was that the opposition also supported the idea of going on with the election that was bound to end in confusion,” the former president said.
“When the military and security chiefs demanded for more time to deal with the insurgency, the reasons were genuine,” he said.
“As at February 2015, it would have been very difficult to vote in Gombe, Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states. But moment all the arms and ammunition that had been ordered finally arrived, the military was able to use them to degrade the capacity of Boko Haram to the level in which they posed the threat to the election,” said Jonathan.