Did Obama push Nigeria's Jonathan to concede defeat‏?

By Rafiu Ajakaye

LAGOS

In his victory speech, Nigerian President-elect Buhari Muhammadu gave "special thanks" to U.S. President Barak Obama for "timely intervention" for peaceful and credible elections in Africa's most populous country.

Now, a senior member of the Peoples' Democratic Party (PDP), the party of incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan, who had lost the election, is shedding more light on Obama's role.

"Both Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron repeatedly called President Jonathan to concede defeat before the official announcement [of the poll results] because they had reports that his opponent had already won," the source, who had been privy to the phone calls," told The Anadolu Agency.

"That was why the president called Buhari around 5pm on Tuesday to congratulate him," he said.

Garba Shehu, Buhari's campaign spokesman, told AA on Tuesday, March 31, that Jonathan had called Buhari and conceded defeat in the March 28 polls.

"I can confirm to you that the president called Gen. Buhari to congratulate him at exactly 5:15pm," Shehu had told AA at the time.

The phone call took place almost ten hours before Nigeria's independent electoral commission officially declared Buhari the winner with a total of 15,424,921 votes against 12,853,162 for Jonathan.

The PDP source said Obama and Cameron had told Jonathan that waiting until the official announcement "may be too late to douse tension or quell possible anger by his supporters."

"Both men told him it would be far too costly – for Nigeria, Africa and Jonathan himself – to play another Laurent Gbagbo," he told AA.

In 2010, Gbagbo rejected the results of presidential polls in Ivory Coast after the election commission declared his rival, Alassane Ouattara, the winner.

The move led to a political crisis in the West African country and more than 3,000 people were killed in the ensuing violence, according to UN data.

Gbagbo's arrest in April 2011 finally ended the bloody, four-month-long conflict.

"President Jonathan honorably agreed to save the country any further bloodshed," the PDP source told AA.

President Jonathan's spokesman Reuben Abati has not responded to AA repeated requests for comment on the story.

In his victory speech on April 1, Buhari gave "special thanks" to Obama for the latter's "timely intervention and support for peaceful and credible elections in Nigeria."

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and other American officials visited Nigeria in the run-up to the election and met the two frontrunners to seek their commitment to fair and peaceful polls.

Jonathan, a Christian from Nigeria's oil-rich delta region, is Nigeria's first democratically elected president to lose power to the opposition.

His electoral defeat last week marked the first time for the PDP to lose power since Nigeria returned to civil rule 16 years ago after three decades of military dictatorship.

Buhari's APC now commands a majority in both houses of the national assembly.

Nigeria has special relationships with both the United States and the United Kingdom.

The Nigerian political elite looks up to Washington as an example of the presidential system Nigeria has practiced since 1979 when it held its first presidential elections.

Until recently, the U.S. was the major importer of Nigeria's crude oil.

Nigeria also imports much of its local needs, including military hardware, from the U.S.

The U.S. remains a major source of foreign aid to Nigeria.

Nigeria, which declared independence in 1963, is a member of the Commonwealth, an intergovernmental organization of territories of the former British Empire.

Most of Nigerian military officers get training at Britain's Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and Mons Officer Cadet School.