Atiku Has The Right To Challenge Buhari — Jonathan

 Atiku Has The Right To Challenge Buhari — Jonathan

Former President Goodluck Jonathan has said that  Atiku Abubakar has the right to challenge President Muhammadu Buhari’s re-election.

According to him, it will be unfair to compare Abubakar’s situation to the 2015 election in which he accepted defeat.

Jonathan said the fundamentals of the 2015 election, which saw him become Nigeria’s first incumbent leader to accept election defeat, were very different from the 2019 elections.

“It is not right for anybody to compare Jonathan’s decision in 2015 with Atiku’s position in 2019 because they are two different scenarios,” Jonathan said in an interview.

He said it was his responsibility to ensure a smooth and credible election was conducted under him, notwithstanding the independence of the election commission.

He said: “In 2015, I was a sitting President, Although INEC is an independent body, every structure of government still operates under the President, one way or the other. So I was a president and INEC conducted the elections under my watch.

Atiku is not a sitting president and if he or the party feels that things were not done right, of course, they are at liberty to challenge it in court.”

The former president, who described his presidential tenure as ‘unique’ in Nigeria’s history, also praised his achievements in office, saying he oversaw an economy that was consistently growing.

He said: “Nigeria was the number one destination for foreign direct investment under my tenure. We were rated the biggest economy in Africa. We transformed the agricultural sector and brought the nation closer to food self-sufficiency.

“Our currency was stable and inflationary pressure was kept at a single digit. We may not have been comfortable with the exchange rate of less than N200 to the dollar at that time, but I can tell you that the economy was stable.

“The stability we had ensured that business people and investors could plan because you were sure of the exchange rate and the cost of your goods at any point in time, whether you were exporting or importing.

Economically, you could say that Nigeria was stable and strong.’’ He acknowledged that there were still many areas that required improvement, but said the stability he oversaw could have taken Nigeria to a height greater than it had been since he left the office.