For the umpteenth time since he handed over the reins on May 29, erstwhile president Goodluck Jonathan paid his successor Muhammadu Buhari a visit at the villa.
The meeting which held behind closed doors at the New Banquet Hall of the State House, lasted barely ten minutes.
Jonathan arrived his former office at 2.00pm and swaggered out at 2.13pm.
No word was issued by the presidency or Jonathan on why this visit happened, so Ekekeee took to working the phones for most of Monday, harassing every presidency source it knows.
And here’s what they told us:
1. Jonathan has only just returned from Tanzania where he was accorded rock star status as he led an international delegation to oversee that country’s elections. Protocol demands that once you return from a high profile foreign mission of that sort, you brief the president on what went down.
“Obasanjo recently did the same”, one presidency source said, so there was nothing earth-shattering here, we were told.
2. Forget the handshakes and the smiles for the cameras, Jonathan has endured plenty of bad press from Buhari and the presidency since he left the villa. “It was a brief meeting but the former president also told Buhari that if he needed him to clear anything that happened under his watch, he was only a phone call away”, yet another presidency source disclosed.
3. Jonathan is also quite the gentleman. If there are corruption investigations going on with regards to certain persons who served under him (and there are legion, we can confirm), he wouldn’t mind being kept in the loop or throwing indicted persons under the bus, if that was required of him as well.
“It was a meeting to smoothen relationships between both men and to see if media attacks can be simmered a wee bit”, one presidency source who speaks for the government, offered.
4. Conceding that he had been roundly defeated at the ballot has meant Jonathan is feted by presidents home and abroad. And Buhari would remain eternally grateful for that act of statesmanship. “This was another opportunity to show gratitude for what was a violent free transition in Nigeria and to acknowledge the role of the former Bayelsa governor in entrenching democratic norms on the continent”, we were also told.
But here’s what Femi Adesina, the president’s spokesman, told us when we rang: “As a former president, Jonathan retains the right to visit the villa when he so desires”.
Of Course he does.
And that’s all you are going to get for a meeting that lasted just ten minutes.
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