The Phone Call That Save Nigeria – BBC

The editor of the BBC, Mansur
Liman, explains how he broke the
story of the historic phone call from
Nigeria’s President Goodluck
Jonathan to admit election defeat –
and how it almost didn’t happen.
I was at the election results centre in
the capital, Abuja, and at around
17:00 (16:00GMT) the votes from all
but three states had been declared.
Muhammadu Buhari, the candidate
for the opposition All Progressives
Congress (APC), had the lead over
incumbent President Goodluck
Jonathan.
During a break in the results, it
became obvious to me that the lead
was unassailable and I began
wondering about what was going on
in the APC camp. Were they
celebrating or still anxiously
waiting?
Going by previous Nigerian
elections, when rigging and results
fiddling has allegedly taken place,
nothing could be taken for granted.
It turns out that so many calls were
coming through that there was no
time to answer them all – and Gen
Buhari did not even know where his
phone was.
I thought that there would still be
some more bumps on the road,
given the passion in the campaign
and the fact that a governing
People’s Democratic Party official
had already tried to halt the count.
I have a lot of contacts within Gen
Buhari’s circle and I know him
personally so I decided to try and
call someone who I knew would be
with him to find out the mood.
After he missed my call, and I
missed his response, I eventually got
through.
‘Unimaginable’
I asked him what was going on,
given that there was no way
President Jonathan could win and I
was surprised by the response.
He told me that Gen Buhari had just
received a phone call from his rival,
in which the president conceded
and congratulated him.
I did not doubt that this was true as
I trusted my source, but given what
has happened before in Nigeria, this
kind of concession was up to that
point unimaginable.
I was pretty sure that I was the first
journalist to get the story so as soon
as I got off the phone I alerted the
BBC’s election desk and tweeted the
details.
There were, of course, people who
were very concerned about what
could happen if the result was
contested.
And I have since discovered that
members of the National Peace
Committee, which is headed by
former President Abdulsalami
Abubakar, visited President
Jonathan as the results were being
announced.
I understand they were the ones
who persuaded the president to do
something to avoid any trouble, and
shortly after the visit he made the
call.
‘Pick up the phone’
But even making the call was not
straight forward. I heard later that
the president could not actually get
through to Gen Buhari.
He rang all the numbers he had for
people in his camp, but no-one
answered.
It turns out that so many calls were
coming through that there was no
time to answer them all – and Gen
Buhari did not even know where his
phone was.
President Jonathan resorted to
sending a messenger round to his
rival’s house to tell him that the
president wanted to speak to him.
And that he should pick up the
phone the next time he tried to call.
By making that call the president
saved Nigeria a great deal of pain. If
the PDP had insisted that they had
won the election, and the APC had
said the same, the country would
have been in chaos.
Lives would have been lost and
property would have been
destroyed. That call showed that in
Nigeria, people can put the country
first.
I have heard from PDP supporters
that the president 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.
Source: BBC