Former President, Olusegun Obasanjo said on Thursday African countries are happy over the defeat of incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan from the outcome of the presidential election in Nigeria.Chief Obasanjo said opinions he received from African countries suggested they were happy over the result of the election just as majority of Nigerians do.
According to him, President Goodluck Jonathan as a moving train was providentially stopped from collapsing Nigeria.
“I have visited six countries since the election, they are as happy about the results as we are in Nigeria. It is good not only for Nigeria, it is good for Africa and I believe it is good for the world.”
Chief Obasanjo said this while leading the African Union Observation Mission to the April 2015 General Election in Sudan, on Thursday at a Washington DC event.
The former president described Nigeria as a country that obsessively plays “a dangerous game of moving close to the precipice”.
He added that the country has come close to disintegration in the run-up to the 2015 elections but switched swiftly to the path of redemption after the polls.
“I hope we will not fall over one of these days,” he said.
He said one month to the election, no one believed “we will have a peaceful election that is reasonably free and fair.”
Describing his role in the election as that of a person standing on the track of a moving train, the former president said during the countdown to the elections, he faced the option of “jumping off” the tracks or “be crushed” if the train did not providentially get “derailed and stop.”
He said he did not jump and was not crushed adding that “at every stage, there must be leaders imbued with sufficient courage and will to stand firm when you have to stand firm.”
He described the results of the elections as what Nigerians “deserve” though some Nigerians “did not want it”.
