Former President Goodluck Jonathan spent five years in office as against the assumed six, a traditional ruler, King Ariwareni Paul, has clarified.
The monarch who is the paramount ruler of Jonathan’s Otuoke community, described as disinformation, any claim that the former president spent six years in office.
The royal father said this is just an orchestrated campaign against their son, Dr. Jonathan. King Paul specifically refered to a series of documentaries on the zoning of the office of President by Dr Don Pedro Obaseki.
In a statement issued in Yenagoa King Paul noted that “some political hirelings and propagandists have wrongly and treacherously claimed to have lasted six years, ostensibly to agree with their predetermined selfish narrative.”
Putting the record straight, the royal father further said “We have read in the news and watched on TV the deliberate misinformation of the public on the political timeline of former Presidents, especially concerning the number of years spent by President Jonathan in office.
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The narrative that Jonathan spent six instead of five years as President is a distortion of historical fact and it is expedient that we correct this misinformation for the sake of posterity.
Criticising what he called a misleading short documentary on Nigeria’s leadership tenures by Don Pedro Obaseki titled ‘PDP 2023: The Arithmetic of Zoning’, the traditional ruler wondered why such a man “who is supposed to have a reasonable knowledge of historical events in Nigeria would willingly opt to distort and misrepresent recent significant occurrence in the political evolution of our dear nation. He said “this was not an error on the side of Obaseki but a deliberate mangling of Nigeria’s political history in pursuit of the political desires of his paymasters.”
“It is on record that Jonathan took his oath of office and was sworn in as President on May 6, 2010, following the death of his boss, President Yar’Adua. “He later contested in 2011 polls and was subsequently sworn into office on May 29, 2011, and he handed over to his successor on May 29, 2015.
So how does May 2010 to May 2015 amounts to 6 years? “Assuming but not conceding that one wants to add the three months Jonathan served as acting President, from when the doctrine of necessity was passed by the National Assembly specifically on February 9, 2010, it will amount to five years and four months and definitely not six years, The Trumpet gathered.
“Individuals and groups are free to promote any candidate of their choice but Nigerians should not be misinformed for their personal reasons.
“We have observed that an otherwise credible television station has been promoting this falsehood in the form of advertisements and documentaries and we are advising them to retract this error. We also admonish sponsors of the advert to get their facts right and stop misinforming Nigerians.”
