By Chinedu Eze
The Chairman of the Editorial Board of THISDAY Newspapers, Mr. Segun Adeniyi has said that former President Goodluck Jonathan was responsible for his loss of the 2015 presidential election.
Adeniyi, who unveiled his book on the election ‘Against the Run of Play’, weekend, told Arise Television, a sister broadcast arm of THISDAY yesterday that Jonathan took so much for granted, including not taking seriously the advice given to him by his supporters, who saw his defeat as the election drew nearer.
The former Senior Special Adviser to the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, remarked that he did not believe that it was the incumbency factor that made African leaders not to win elections but the inability of the opposition to come together.
According to him, once the opposition political parties come together, they can defeat the incumbent president.
“Majority of African incumbents don’t lose elections. So, when I researched on this, I discovered the same issue but I now realised that incumbency factor is not really the factor. When I looked at it, I said the real problem is the factionalisation of the opposition. I wrote a piece on this and I used the Nigerian example then. Later, I turned it into an article after the election. So, united they win, divided they lose. There was no way Buhari could have defeated Jonathan, given the fact that there was no strong opposition then, until the coalition was formed. If the opposition were really serious they should begin to work towards coalition,†Adeniyi said.
He defended what he credited the former President Goodluck Jonathan in his book, saying that after interviewing him, he wrote it and mailed it to him and three days later, he went to see Jonathan and they looked at the interview together and he removed what the former President was not comfortable with.
According to Adeniyi, the former President called him after three hours to also review the interview.
Reacting to the former president’s promise that he would write his own account of the election, Adeniyi said he could go ahead, saying that there was nothing he could do about it.
He also said he could not verify the claim that the US deployed warships at the Gulf of Guinea during the election.
He, however, noted that the former Senate President, Senator David Mark hinted that Jonathan had told him that the former US President, Barrack Obama was not comfortable with the planned passage of Anti Gay Bill, which was later passed by the National Assembly and signed into law by the former President.
