Written by Bolaji Abdullahi, the National
Publicity of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and former Minister in
the Jonathan cabinet, the book gives detailed and largely exclusive
account of the making and the unmaking of the Jonathan presidency,
revealing for the first time, some of the intrigues that surrounded the
2015 presidential election and its aftermath.
On a Platter of Gold is part
history, part political thriller, which answers many of the often-asked
questions about Jonathan’s incredible rise to the highest political
office in the land and his unprecedented electoral defeat in 2015.
The book, which has the subtitle, “How Jonathan Won and Lost Nigeria" is introduced as follows:
“Was Goodluck Jonathan weak and clueless,
as his traducers have claimed? Or - as his supporters have alleged - was
he just a victim of vicious conspiracies by an entitled cabal that
would stop at nothing to bring down this ‘intruder’ to power?
“From an unknown university teacher,
Goodluck Jonathan rose to become President of Africa’s largest
democracy, in less than a decade - most astonishingly, without winning a
single vote in his name. In contesting the 2011 presidential election,
he declared that growing up as the son of a fisherman in the creeks of
Nigeria’s Niger Delta, he had no shoes. This message resonated with
millions of Nigerians.
“If I can make it, then you can as well,”
he had declared. He went on to win with the highest majority vote ever
recorded in the nation’s history. Four years later,
President Jonathan had suffered a great reversal of fortunes; his
magical ascendancy halted by a shocking electoral defeat. When he
conceded to the winner, he was roundly celebrated as Nigeria’s hero of
democracy. Not everyone agreed. But what really happened?”
Asked why he wrote the book, Abdullahi
said: “I believe that journalists who find themselves in government owe
it as a duty to the profession to tell a good story afterwards.”
A former columnist and editor with Thisday
newspaper, Abdullahi brought his perceptive power as a skilful analyst
to bear, producing a great work of free-flowing prose. Even though he
was himself involved in many of the events that make up the book, he has
managed to keep himself out the story; thereby demonstrating a rare
fidelity to objectivity and balance in a way that only a thoroughbred
journalist can do.
As a former Minister in Jonathan’s
cabinet, Abdullahi had easy access to the major characters in the story,
his former colleagues actually. Using this to great advantage, he has
produced what may be considered a seminal book not only on the Jonathan
administration but also on the contemporary history of Nigerian
politics.
Azu Ishiekwene, the MD/Editor-In-Chief of
The Interview and Board Member of the Global Editors Network, describes
the book as ‘’a rare three-dimensional view” of the Goodluck Jonathan
presidency, which he says combines the insights of an insider with the
penetrating curiosity of a notable journalist. “You can’t start reading
the book and not want to finish it,‘’ he declares.
The Rhodes Professor of Race Relations at Oxford University, Wale Adebanwi said this about the book:
“On a Platter of Gold is an
insightful, intricate, part exhilarating, part depressing but
undoubtedly illuminating narrative of Nigeria’s unending democratic
possibilities and endless frustrations. This book again emphasises how
the various factions of the Nigerian political elite are gifted in the
art of the capture and re-capture of power but largely vacuous in the
art of building and sustaining a good society. In Abdullahi’s
fascinating account, we encounter absorbing details of the politics of
the (im)possible, the absurdities of an untameable appetite for power,
the vanities of privilege, prestige and personal glory and the selective
outrage regarding some fundamental national crises which members of a
faction of the elite used in propelling themselves to power.’’
The book, which is slated for release in
October, will be presented in November in Abuja at an event that
promises to be one of the largest gathering of politicians and political
actors in 2017.
0 comments:
Post a Comment