2015 Election: GEJ Blames Obama, Jega for Loss to Buhari

Former President Goodluck Jonathan has finally admitted that his electoral defeat in the 2015 elections was partly caused by former U.S. President Barack Obama and his officials who made it abundantly clear to him by their actions that they wanted a change of government in Nigeria and were ready to do anything to achieve that purpose.

Jonathan was not also comfortable with how the election was handled by Prof. Attahiru Jega, former chairman of Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

In an advanced copy of the book, ‘Against the Run of Play – How an incumbent president was defeated in Nigeria,’ written by Olusegun Adeniyi, chairman of the THISDAY Editorial Board, Jonathan said 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.

He said that “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.

“As at the first week in February 2015, when about 40 per cent 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 former President said. Jonathan also said he had a meeting with Jega to express his reservations about the preparedness of INEC for the exercise, but he insisted that the election would go ahead.

He said: “Of course, 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.”

 In the book, which will be launched on Friday, Jonathan also defended his decision to postpone the election, saying it was for security reasons.

He said: “When the military and security chiefs demanded for more time to deal with the insurgency, the reasons were genuine.

“As at February 2015, it would have been very difficult to vote in Gombe, Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states.

“But the 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 at which they posed no threat to the election.”