Former Head of State, Abdulsalam Abubakar, has said ex-President Goodluck Jonathan was not been given enough credit for conceding defeat after the 2015 presidential election.
Jonathan in 2015, became Nigeria’s first incumbent President to lose re-election, after he promptly accepted defeat to incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari and congratulated him.
Abubakar in an interview with Nigeria Now Newspaper to commemorate Nigeria’s 20th year of democracy, said: “People keep harping on the role of our Peace Committee in convincing President Goodluck Jonathan to concede defeat to Muhammadu Buhari.
”Nigerians have not given adequate credit to President Johnathan because he took the decision out of his own volition to concede and congratulate Buhari in 2015.”
He admitted that although the Peace Committee, a national mediation committee of ex-presidents which he heads, spoke with political contestants when the election results began to trickle in to caution their supporters, “but we did not sit down with Johnathan to dictate to him, he conceded out (of) his conviction.”
Abubakar claimed he inherited a divided Nigeria, whose armed forces particularly were concerned about jostling for power than safeguarding the land.
He said his government had a mandate to change the perception and attend to the prevailing political unrest.
“The (Nigerian) military was a victim of its interference in governance as most of its brains got deployed into administering the country at the expense of professionalism and our management training,” Mr Abubakar recalled.
He said a 9-month transition programme was drawn to brace the country up for civil rule, adding that a constitution review committee, headed by late Niki Tobi, was set up to deliver the 1999 Constitution.
