My Book On Jonathan’s Administration Out In October – APC Spokesman

Spokesman of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Bolaji Abdullahi, says a book he wrote on the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan, will be out in October.

“On a Platter of Gold”, written by Abdullahi who was also a Minister during the Jonathan presidency, gives detailed and largely exclusive account of the the “making and the unmaking” of the administration of the ex-president.

The former minister, said the book gives insight into the intrigues that surrounded the 2015 presidential election.

“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,” Abdullahi said in a statement.

“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.”

On why he wrote the book, the former columnist and editor with Thisday newspaper said: “I believe that journalists who find themselves in government owe it as a duty to the profession to tell a good story afterwards.”

As a former Minister in Jonathan’s cabinet, Abdullahi had easy access to the major characters in the story, his former colleagues and uses this to produce what may be considered a seminal book not only on the Jonathan administration but also on the contemporary history of Nigerian politics.