More excerpts have been scooped from the yet-to-be-launched book which chronicles the rise of Muhammadu Buhari and the fall of Goodluck Jonathan in the 2015 presidential election. In the book titled "Against The Run of Play," written by the Chairman of ThisDay Editorial Board, Mr. Olusegun Adeniyi, Jonathan revealed how he was betrayed by his party members.
He also said that his family is being hounded by the Buhari administration in the name of the anti-corruption fight. "I feel sad about the way my family is being hounded," he said.
"Society is like a building. You build it one block at a time. If every president decides to go in to dismantle what his predecessor did, society will never make progress. I expected President Buhari to correct whatever mistakes I may have made and then carry on from there.
"But a situation in which people go into exile for political reasons is not good for us. "His style of fighting corruption is different from mine and since most Nigerians apparently prefer his style, it is okay. There are steps you take that will help in retrieving ill-gotten wealth and punish offenders while restoring confidence in the system. But there are also things you can do to damage the system," the former president stated.
The Economic Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) had on Tuesday, April 25, withdrawn its application for a stay of execution of the judgment which ordered that Patience Jonathan's frozen $5,842,316.66 (about N1.7billion) be unfrozen.
The anti-graft commission had alleged that the money traced to Mrs. Jonathan's Skye bank account was proceeds of corruption, and therefore got the court to freeze it.
On April 6, Justice Mojisola Olatoregun ordered that the account be unfrozen but the EFCC appealed the judgment, only to make a sudden U-turn on Tuesday (yesterday).
On the 2015 poll, former president Jonathan said he was betrayed by the former National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Adamu Muazu and some Northern leaders in the party
"I felt really betrayed by the result coming from some northern states. Perhaps for ethnic purposes, even security agents colluded with the opposition to come up with spurious results against me. You saw the way the Inspector General of Police, a man I appointed, suddenly turned himself into the ADC to Buhari immediately after the election," he recalled.
"How could we have lost Ondo, Benue and Plateau states if our people were committed to the cause? If you examine the results, you will see a pattern: in places where ordinarily we were strong, our supporters did not show enough commitment to mobilise the voters.
"What happened was very sad not for me as a person, but for our democracy. "Take, for instance, the PDP National Chairman, Alhaji Adamu Mu’azu. I believe he joined in the conspiracy against me. For reasons best known to him, he helped to sabotage the election in favour of the opposition."
In a report published by Pulse on Tuesday, also from the book, Jonathan had expressed disappointment at how the then chairman of the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Attahiru Jega went ahead with the election knowing many people had not gotten their Permanent Voters Card (PVC).
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