The immediate past President, Goodluck Jonathan has explained why he conceded victory to President Muhammadu Buhari shortly after the last presidential election.
Speaking during a dinner in his honour by Cercle Diplomatique, Geneva, Switzerland, Jonathan said he relinquished power to Buhari because he did not want Nigeria to be turned into a war zone with people dying and many more pouring into other nations in Africa and beyond, as refugees.
“I never knew that the human brain had the capacity for such enhanced rapid thinking. One hundred and one things were going through my mind every second. My country was at the verge of collapse. The tension in the land was abysmally high and palpable, in the months leading to the election. The country became more polarised more than ever before, such that the gap between the North and the South and between Christians and Muslims became quite pronounced.”
“In fact, it became so disturbing that some interest groups in the United States began to predict indeed, many Nigerians did buy into this doomsday prophesy as they began to brace themselves for the worst.
“As the President, I reminded myself that the Government I led had invested so much effort into building our country. I worked hard with my top officials to encourage Nigerians and non-Nigerians to invest in our country to be able to provide jobs and improve the lives of our people.
“We worked hard to grow our economy and to improve and bring Nigeria up as the biggest economy in Africa, with a GDP of about half a trillion dollars,” Jonathan said.
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