Many people missed the point on why Jonathan lost in 2015 — Dr Ardo

Dr Umar Ardo, a former lecturer at the Nigeria Defence Academy, and Political Adviser to former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, had shortly before the 2015 polls, predicted what would be the outcome and got it right. An authority in power dynamics, he explains in this interview, how other post-election analyses failed to place their fingers on what actually led to the defeat of Jonathan in 2015. Excerpts: the presidential election took place and on the 18th, Prof. Attahiru Jega announced the results and pronounced Buhari and his CPC defeated. Against Buhari's 13th April avowal, that would've been the end. Yet, CPC went to tribunal to challenge the outcome of the April 16 election; and Buhari contested in 2015 again; meaning that Buhari’s vow had been reversed. The rational questions are: what happened? Why and how did the CPC go to tribunal? Why and how did Buhari contest again in 2015? Until these questions are asked and answered, any narrative and analysis of the APC merger, Buhari's contest and the defeat of an incumbent will be incomplete and defective. I did not see these questions asked and answered. I did not also see the narrative and analysis of the presidential election tribunal and its fallout, principally the sacking of Justice Isa Salami, in the politics of the merger and the 2015 presidential election made, either in the books of Professor Paden or Adeniyi, or in other narratives and analyses of the election. With this vital missing link, it’s natural to fall into misperceptions, misconceptions, misrepresentations and even mischief in accounting for Buhari’s mystical political turnaround in 2015. This is a major flaw in Paden’s and Adeniyi’s books that rendered their general conclusions untenable.

President Jonathan lost the election from that Sunday he removed Justice Salami as President Court of Appeal, because that act effectually ended the secret alliance between Jonathan’s PDP and Tinubu’s ACN. More importantly, it handed over Tinubu’s ACN to Buhari’s CPC for the APC merger. The reason is of the then six ACN-controlled states, only Lagos was by INEC’s pronouncement; the rest was by tribunals’ pronouncements headed by Justice Salami as President, Court of Appeal. So Salami’s brazen removal obviously was a serious affront to the ACN. The causal causation is thiswithout CPC going to tribunal, Salami wouldn’t have been removed; without Salami’s removal, ACN would not have been thrown into the arms of Buhari, without which there would’ve been no merger, and without which the incumbent wouldn’t have been defeated.

Would you then say it was political sophistication that made Buhari to see the signs and contest a fourth time?

I suppose he saw a winning strategy practically placed before him, superior to previous ones. He saw from his three defeats a convincing victory formula formulated. It took him less than three hours to make up his mind. Afterwards, he called back and said “I accept your suggestions; go ahead and implement them.” And so they were implemented. The rest, as they say, is history! Thus, the foundation for Buhari’s fourth attempt and victory, turning around his political fortune, was singularly devised. Every other thing done thereafter in furtherance of that objective was built on that very foundation. This is without prejudice to other great efforts and contributions made by individuals and groups, singularly and collectively.