Former President
Goodluck Jonathan says Barack Obama, former US president, was desperate to have
him removed.
Jonathan,
who was president from 2010 to 2015, said Obama and his officials made it clear
to him that they wanted a change of government in Nigeria.
The
former president did not have the warmest of relationships with the Obama
administration.
In
the heat of the Boko Haram insurgency, the US government placed an arms embargo
on Nigeria, though it cited gross abuse of human rights on the part of the
Nigerian army as the reason for its decision.
In
an advance copy of ‘Against the Run of Play’, a book which chronicles how
Jonathan lost the 2015 presidential election, written by Segun Adeniyi and seen
by TheCable, the former president said Obama went very far in his attempt to
have him removed.
“President
Barack Obama and his officials made it clear to me by their actions that they
wanted a change of government in Nigeria and were ready to do anything to
achieve that purpose. They even brought some naval ships into the Gulf of
Guinea in the days preceding the election,” he said on page 184.
Jonathan
also accused Obama of influencing the opinions of world leaders against him.
“I
got on very well with Prime Minister David Cameron but at some point, I noticed
that the Americans were putting pressure on him and he had joined them against
me,” he said.
“But
I didn’t realise how far President Obama was prepared to go to remove me until
France caved in to the pressure from America.”
Explaining
how desperate Obama was to have his way, Jonathan said he had a good
relationship with President Francois Hollande of France, but the former US
president muddled the waters.
He
then said weeks to the election, Hollande joined “the Americans in supporting
the opposition against me”.
The
former president said the Obama administration kept citing allegations of
corruption against his government as the reason for its stand against him, but
that it was not specific in its accusation.
“There
was this blanket accusation that my body language was supporting corruption, a
line invented by the opposition but which the media and civil society bought
into and helped project to the world. That was the same thing I kept hearing
from the Americans without specific allegations,” he added.
The
book will be launched on Friday. Adeniyi, the author, is the chairman of
THISDAY editorial board.
Some
of his other works are ‘Last 100 Days of Abacha’ and ‘Power, Politics and
Death’.
- The Cable
No comments:
Post a Comment