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By Godwin Chukwumaechi
Even as the dust continues to settle over events leading to the last days of the Dr Goodluck Jonathan presidency, former minister of Sports and Youth Development in the administration, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, has said that the former president was neither weak nor clueless.
Dr Jonathan, who has been roundly criticised as weak and clueless during his reign (2010-2015), lost the 2015 presidential election to former President Muhammadu Buhari.
Abdullahi made the assertion in Port Harcourt at the weekend while presenting his book, ‘On A Platter Of Gold – How Jonathan Won and Lost Nigeria,’ at the first book reading event tagged August Meeting held in the Rivers State capital.
The former minister who also served as the national publicity secretary of the All Progressives Congress (2016-2018), disagreed with the widely held claims that the former President was weak and clueless, but rather described him as a patriot.
Abdullahi said: “Definitely he’s not weak, definitely he’s not clueless from my experience. The most important thing I know about him is that he’s very patriotic. As a patriot he’s also someone who’s careful about how he uses power. He understood the enormity of the powers of the President and he used to say that if he uses 30% of his power as President of Nigeria he will become a dictator. So he’s someone who is careful and who is also reluctant to hurt people. So because of his reluctance to hurt people, it’s possible that some will interpret it to mean that he’s clueless.
“Some of the things that he did at the time, some other people have done the same and even worse. So I think he was just a victim of the kind of politics of that time. I think if he had been president at this time, he would probably have had a different approach”.
The former minister while commending the organisers of the event added that what inspired him to write the book was to document for posterity the inner political intrigues, complications and complexities that played out during the former President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan’s (a minority Ijaw man from Ogbia in Bayelsa State) meteoric rise to the highest office in Nigeria and his eventual loss of the coveted office.
Abdulahi who is also the author of ‘Sweet Sixteen,’ described his latest book as an attempted of “a journalist trying to practice history”, adding that he was inspired to write the book for a long while.
He added that as a minister he saw every event that played out from the point of view of a journalist and a technocrat, not a typical Nigerian politician and the irresistible urge to put pen on paper to document what he saw in Nigerian power play.
He stressed; “I saw everything in government from a news angle, but soon realized that I couldn’t report all that I saw in government. I saw myself mainly as a journalist and technocrat not as a politician and realized that I was excluding myself from the mainstream but the journalistic instinct in me took a better part, so the book came forth”.
Abdullahi said he was elated that the review of his book was part of the programme of the first quarter ‘August Meeting’ by the organisers who also used the occasion to launch the Port Harcourt Education Champions League.
He stated that the idea was to stimulate the culture of reading and writing among the younger generation was noble and should be encouraged.
He regretted that some of the upcoming generations were wallowing in ignorance even about their immediate environment despite the internet age because they were no longer intentionally reading and writing.
Kingsley Wali, convener of the August Meeting explained that the idea behind the Education Champions League, ECL, was to promote literacy and intellectual engagement in the state other than politics and political bickering.
The book reviewer, Tombari Robinson Sibe, commended the author for the in-depth and incisive chronicling of the inner workings in Jonathan’s rise to the presidency and his eventual defeat in the 2015 general elections.
