Read his piece below...
The book 'Muhammadu Buhari-The Challenges of Leadership in Nigeria' by Professor John Paden is not only an intellectually lazy work, it is also a fallacious document hastily put together to paint the protagonist in the borrowed garb of an effective leader who is cleaning the Augean Stable of misrule and corruption in Nigeria, but my question is this-how can you fight corruption with lies?
I
have taken my time to x-ray the book and I cannot help but agree with
the national leader of the ruling All Progressive Congress that Paden
has done a great disservice to the truth. If I were Paden, I would
consider a career in fiction writing. His talents are much better suited
for that than to scholarly and investigative work.
On
page 52 of the book, Professor Paden declares that Dr. Goodluck
Jonathan declared for the April 2011 Presidential election on Saturday,
18th of September 2011.
But
for a man who was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford University, Paden did not
show much scholarliness because if he did, he would have established
that Dr. Jonathan made world history by being the first ever
Presidential candidate to make his declaration on the social media
platform, facebook, on Wednesday the 15th of September, 2016, a feat
which was featured on the New York Times, the Washington Post and in
several international news media.
If this was the only error in the book, one could forgive Paden, but the errors go on and on.
For
example on page 53, Paden, without citing any proof or evidence, called
Dr. Jonathan's margin of victory in the South south and Southeast
'nonsensical', but then he goes ahead to accept President Buhari's
margin of victory in the North as valid even though they mirrored Dr.
Jonathan's margins in the South.
On
page 55, Paden called to question Jonathan's handling of the economy
but then in page 60 he admits that the 7% GNP growth Nigeria attained
under Jonathan was "impressive". Does Paden suffer from a split
personality? Here he is calling into question former President
Jonathan's ability to manage an economy that he himself admits generated
an impressive growth yet he is praising a President Buhari under whom
Nigeria has gone into recession. I don't get it Paden!
Perhaps Paden should have written a book singing Jonathan's praises instead of President Buhari's!
Then
he attacks Dr. Jonathan in page 55 over the 2012 attempt to remove fuel
subsidies and pointed to the street protests that broke out in
reaction, but curiously failed to mention that such protests were
instigated and led by the then opposition members including President
Buhari's former running mate, Pastor Tunde Bakare, who was openly at the
fore front of the protests and Malam Nasir Elrufai, who coordinated
activities during the Occupy Nigeria protests. This is nothing short of
intellectual dishonesty.
In
page 59, Paden says 'President Jonathan had signed a pledge in 2011 to
run for only one term'. This is just a lie and betrays the fact that
Professor Paden might have replaced investigation with gossip as a means
of gathering information. I make bold to say that if Professor Paden
can produce a copy of the signed pledge then I would give him a million
dollars!
On
page 65, Paden goes ad hominem saying "President Jonathan seemed more
focused on hanging onto power by looting the public treasury".
The
above is nothing short of libel. But before he is made to answer for
his lies in court, let me ask Paden a simple question. If what he wrote
about Dr. Jonathan looting the treasury is true, then how come Nigeria
was able to have what he himself agrees was an 'impressive' economic
growth and how come Nigeria made progress on the annual Transparency
International Corruption Perception Index?
On
page 67, showing his inability to give credit to whom it is due, Paden
accused Jonathan of appointing partisan and dishonest Resident Electoral
Commissioners for States so they could assist the People's Democratic
Party (PDP) rig elections but praised INEC Chairman Professor Attahiru
Jega for his honesty. What he failed to mention is that it was President
Jonathan who nominated and appointed the honest Jega without having
ever met him and that it is this same honest Jega that was fully in
charge of posting officials to states to serve as Resident Electoral
Commissioners and who (along with his board) had power to recall and
discipline any REC.
Then
in page 68, Paden outdid himself as a liar when he said "faced with
these results, would Jonathan concede, or would he challenge the results
in court?"
Paden
continues on his lying spree by saying inter alia that 'several former
African heads of state held private meetings with Jonathan....they
insisted...that he accept the results". Not yet done with his fallacies,
Paden continues "there was considerable international pressure on
Jonathan, including by the Archbishop of Canterbury and Western
Diplomats".
All these are the figment of the imagination of either Paden or his sources.
To
prove that Paden is a liar, I will quote Mansur Liman, the editor of
the BBC Hausa Service in Nigeria, who was at the INEC Elections Result
Center in Abuja WHILE results were being released.
Mr.
Liman testified verbally on the BBC Hausa service and in writing on its
website that while results were still being AWAITED and BEFORE INEC had
declared Buhari as winner of the election, he had placed a call to the
Buhari campaign and testified that his contact within the Buhari
campaign "told me that Gen Buhari had just received a phone call from
his rival, in which the president conceded and congratulated him."
Testifying
further, Mr. Liman said that the report he received indicated that "the
president (President Jonathan) took the decision to make the call
without consulting anyone. They told me that if he had talked to some of
his advisers, they would have objected."
This
is a direct testimony from a man on the ground with timelines and
records that can stand up in court. Are we to jettison his eyewitness
and substantial documentary evidence for the unsubstantiated lies of
Paden?
But
even without taking into account Liman's testimony, I traveled to
London after making calls to one of the Archbishop of Canterbury's
closest and most senior aides and after a face to face interview with
one of the people involved I have established beyond reasonable doubt
that the Archbishop of Canterbury DID NOT Call Dr. Jonathan to mount
pressure on him to concede. Paden lied!!
This
is a direct quote from an official in the Palace of Lambeth when I
interviewed him on Paden's claims-"that is nonsense. The Archbishop did
not call to put pressure on President Jonathan to concede. He called
AFTER President Jonathan had conceded to congratulate him for
conceding!"
I
urge Nigerian newspapers to reach out to the Palace of Lambeth to
investigate John Paden's claims themselves. Both Paden and his source
are liars!
If
anybody has a history of problems conceding when he was defeated, that
person is none other than President Muhammadu Buhari himself. In his
three previous unsuccessful attempts at the Presidency, not once did
Muhammadu Buhari ever concede much less congratulate the victor.
Instead, his comments when he lost were at best uncharitable and at
worst unpatriotic!
But oh, there are more lies in Paden's book.
In
page 195, Paden lies again when he said that in May of 2016 while Dr.
Jonathan was in the US, he had to "cancel some of his public engagements
because of protests by Nigerians living abroad".
This
lie is so easy to disprove. Dr. Jonathan did not cancel any events. He
could not attend two events in California and he asked me to represent
there. The two events were his Keynote speech at the California State
University in Sacramento and his leadership award by two California
cities.
The
truth of the matter is that Dr. Jonathan took ill and it was the
officials of Nigeria's mission in New York who actually took him to
hospital. Both Dr. Paden and President Buhari can call the head of
Mission in New York to confirm if this is true.
And
lies are not the main problem of Paden's book. The main problem is that
for a book on President Buhari, Paden's book places too much focus on
blaming others for the President's shortcomings.
One
would have thought that such a book would at least talk of President
Buhari's achievements, but on second thought, when you have a President
who has little or no achievements, I suppose you would have to make do
with lies and accusations as fillers for a book on him otherwise such a
book would be very slim.
Let
me end by saying that no matter how close Professor Paden thinks he is
to President Buhari, he cannot be as close to him as the President's own
wife and mother of his kids.
After
he finished giving his procured and false whitewashed verdict of the
President, the President's wife gave the real verdict on President
Buhari just a week ago as follows: "if things continue like this up to
2019, I will not go out and campaign again and ask any woman to vote
like I did before. I will never do it again.”
No
wonder that while Paden devotes over 60 pages of his 284 page book to
former President Jonathan, he only devotes a few sentences in two pages
(36-37) to the President's wife, Aisha Buhari. Of course, he tried
unsuccessfully not to call too much attention to the one person who
could disprove all the lies in his book. Thank God for the courage of
Aisha Buhari.
Omokri
is the founder of the Mind of Christ Christian Center in California,
author of Shunpiking: No Shortcuts to God and Why Jesus Wept and the
host of Transformation with Reno Omokri
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