Jonathan Aide Faults Martins, Insists ex-President wasn’t Pressured to Concede

The office of Dr. Goodluck Jonathan has dismissed the claim by Kenny Martins that the former President was persuaded to concede defeat after the 2015 general elections as baseless and typically fictitious.

Martins of the Police Equipment Foundation had faulted Jonathan’s claim that he was not pressured by anybody to concede to President Muhammadu Buhari, stressing that the action was facilitated by the intervention of former President Olusegun Obasanjo.

However, a statement by Mr. Ikechukwu Eze, media adviser to Jonathan dismissed Martin’s claims as fiction.

It said: “Our attention has been drawn to a statement by one Mr. Kenny Martins where he faulted former president Goodluck Jonathan’s recent assertion that he conceded defeat after the last presidential election without anybody’s prompting, because he believed “it was the right thing to do.”

“In opting to disagree with Jonathan, Martins claimed that the former President was indeed persuaded to concede defeat at a meeting where ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo was supposed to have told Jonathan “if you win, I will support you; but for God’s sake, if you lose, just go quietly.”

“We won’t think twice before dismissing this claim as baseless and typically fictitious. Without seeking to join issues with such a man, we wish to however make the following clarifications:
“The former President’s visit to Obasanjo at the height of the campaign for the 2015 Presidential elections was highly publicised. It was a visit undertaken by Jonathan to seek his predecessor’s support for his re-election bid.

“We wish to place it on record that the issue of ‘losing and conceding defeat’ was neither mentioned nor discussed at the meeting. It is instructive that Martins admitted that he was not at the meeting, as such, he has already conceded that it is not his place to determine what was discussed.

“We deplore the mischief of needlessly dragging in the names of the General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, Pastor Enoch Adeboye and Bishop David Oyedepo, Winners Chapel General Overseer, simply because they were in attendance. We can however confirm that the two respected men of God were at the meeting, to the extent that they believed that Obasanjo and his political godson Jonathan, who were then having some differences, should be reconciled for the good of the nation.

“Again, we repeat that at no time during the meeting did the issue of conceding defeat feature in the discussions, a fact that the men of God can confirm.
“We advise that people with credibility issues should search for relevance elsewhere, rather than seek unearned validation by unduly attaching themselves to obvious good intentions of the former President,” Eze added.