Ex-President Jonathan was a victim of power game

Former President Goodluck Jonathan’s senior adviser on media, Dr. Reuben Abati, has dismissed the widespread view that the former president lost the last election because of incompetence and
cluelessness.
Abati said in his first major interview in the October/
November edition of The Interview, that Jonathan
was “a victim of power game” and the vicious
propaganda of the opposition.
He said, “All they could focus on was trying to
discredit the president. They called him clueless; they said he was incompetent; they said he was a
drunkard!” In a separate interview also featured in the coming edition of The Interview, Mr. Femi Adesina, the senior adviser to President Muhammadu Buhari on media and publicity, expressed a different view.
Adesina said he knew that Jonathan would lose and
was not surprised when it happened.
“If Jonathan had won the election, Nigeria would
have shut down”, he said, adding that the
government had run out of steam.
Abati spoke on the last days of Jonathan in the Aso
Rock Villa, his own controversial retraction of the
article against Buhari, the attitude of the moneybags
who abandoned Jonathan in his moment of need, his relationship with former first lady, Patience Jonathan, and his love-hate drama with many of his passionate fans.
Adesina was no less forthright. He spoke on Buhari’s
style, the war on corruption and Boko Haram, the
CBN’s policy of defending the naira, and his
relationship with the president.
The edition, which promises to keep the reader on
the edge of their seats, also contains interviews with
the incoming vice chancellor of the University of
Ibadan, Professor Abel Olayinka; a conversation with Corps Marshal Boboye Oyeyemi; and an insight by social entrepreneur, Chude Jideonwu on how Red
Media Africa ran Buhari’s election campaign.