Goodluck Jonathan’s concession phone call was honourable not virtuous 

President Goodluck Jonathan, since leaving office, has attempted to use ‘the phone call’ in the final days of his term to define his legacy more significantly than the 6 years before it.

When President Jonathan tweeted his congratulations to the US President-elect Donald Trump, after the elections last week, he also congratulated Hilary Clinton for conceding the election. He claimed that “having done this, I know it takes great sacrifice.”

At a speech at Bloomberg in London in June this year, he was committed to consolidating democracy in Africa. He claimed that it has been his long standing desire to help cultivate democracy in Nigeria and in neighbouring countries. He reflected that his concession to

President Buhari, showed ordinary Nigerians that he was equal to them.

The famous phone call, conceding the election to President Muhammadu Buhari, was as an unprecedented moment. Elections in Nigeria, as covered in domestic and international press, usually followed a fixed template.

An incumbent party defeating a weak opposition, with accusations of electoral fraud and intimidation leading to court cases, and bouts of post-election violence. But last year nothing in the script came true. The incumbent party lost, electoral fraud was relatively minimal, and post-election violence was surprisingly avoided. President Jonathan, when it was clear that he had lost, called President

Buhari, congratulating him, even as others in his party plotted how to retain power in spite of their party’s defeat.

That President Jonathan had swiftly conceded that he had lost, where others around him struggled to grapple with that reality, was significant enough to understand why he would emphasise so heavily on that moment since leaving office. An audio clip of the phone call, released by the presidency, showed that his congratulations wasn’t muttered through gritted teeth but genuine, and jovial, not so much handing over the baton to someone else but launching it, with energy and relief.

Concerns of possible of post-electoral violence, especially in international press, were rife during the presidential campaign. The tenseness of the presidential campaign. The tenseness of the presidential campaign, and how genuine the APC’s chances were, gave strength to those predictions. The postponement of the election last February added to the uncertainty and fear. But the phone call,

President Jonathan’s remarkable “sacrifice”, prevented any possible unrest and needless loss of life. It meant that the celebrations and the hope many Nigerians felt in April 2015 (oh, so long ago) had room for expression.

Yet the virtue of this moment has been wildly overplayed. Conceding an election lost to the APC by over 2.6million votes, doesn’t require “sacrifice”. Hilary Clinton’s call congratulating Donald trump, despite the fact that (at the time of writing) she was on course to actually win the popular vote by over 750,000 votes, losing on electoral college votes, was not sacrificial either but dignified.

The context in Nigeria that allows President Jonathan to rewrite his legacy on the basis of his commitment to democracy, has generously given his actual legacy an olive branch. Past Nigerian leaders have resisted concessions, instead taking contested election results to court. Incidentally, in 2011 President Buhari, then the candidate for the CPC, challenged President Jonathan’s victory in court. More consequentially, he did not condemn the violence in the days after the election in April 2011, as riots in Kano and Kaduna killed hundreds of people according to Human Rights Watch.

The challenges of transparency and fairness in African elections have often made concessions difficult for opposition parties, facing incumbents with larger resources. But last April, Goodluck Jonathan was the incumbent. He lost not because of voter fraud or lack of financial support. The 2015 elections were deemed the fairest and freest in Nigerian democratic history.

He lost predominantly because of a 4-year period which saw corruption rise- and the frustrations of Nigerians with it- economic growth decrease, federal reserve decrease despite high oil prices, and Boko Haram’s insurgency (occupying Nigerian territory and killing thousands of people) without adequate response.

President Jonathan’s concession was unprecedented because of poor past electoral conditions and irresponsible leadership in Nigeria’s political class. His phone call to President Buhari in April last year with brought widespread relief and praise in the moment. But there is no virtue in conceding to what has already happened. In isolation, it was nothing more than a dignified, honourable moment.