I
was shocked when former president Goodluck Jonathan called me to concede
defeat while votes were still being counted during the 2015 election, President
Muhammadu Buhari has disclosed
Buhari
made the disclosure on Monday at the Presidential Banquet Hall, Aso Villa,
Abuja, when he hosted the State House Press Corps to a lunch as part of
activities marking this year’s democracy day.
“When
he made that famous call at 4:45 pm and said ‘Good evening Mr. President, I
have called to congratulate you and I concede defeat’, I was silent for quite a
while because I was surprised and he said ‘did you hear me?’,” the president
said.
Buhari
said he was shocked because for someone who was a deputy governor, a governor,
a vice president and a president for six years to concede that easily showed
Jonathan’s “great sense of patriotism”.
President
Buhari said another former military head of state, Abdulsalami Abubakar,
advised him to visit Jonathan for his “statesmanship and decision to save the
Nigerian state”.
Buhari
also said Jonathan belonged to a party that was at the helms of affairs
for 16 years and for him to still go ahead and concede “was definitely not an
easy decision”.
The
president added that during the visit to thank Jonathan, General
Abdulsalami again advised that in order to smoothen the transition process, he
(Buhari) should set up a committee to meet with the outgoing ministers of
Jonathan to begin the process of handing over at that level.
“Jonathan
sincerely agreed to the suggestion and I got one of the best bureaucrats, in
the person of Ahmed Joda, and told him to look round the country and come up
with a team for the task.
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