Former President Goodluck Jonathan has revealed he was prepared to die inside the Presidential Villa rather than flee or abandon his post during the tense constitutional crisis that followed the prolonged illness of his predecessor, the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua.
Speaking during a recent interview with the Rainbow Book Club, Jonathan broke his silence on the behind-the-scenes turmoil that shook Nigeria between late 2009 and early 2010, describing it as one of the most difficult periods in the nation’s democratic history.
Jonathan, who served as vice president at the time, disclosed that Yar’Adua had indeed signed a letter transmitting power to him in line with constitutional requirements — but said a close aide to the ailing president deliberately withheld the document from the National Assembly.
“That letter was written. But the person who the letter was handed over to, I will not mention the name, refused to submit it to the National Assembly,” Jonathan revealed.
Yar’Adua had left Nigeria for Saudi Arabia in late 2009 for medical treatment without notifying the legislature or officially transferring power, plunging the country into a political crisis that exposed deep divisions along regional and religious lines.
“The country was tense. Under this north-south divide, Christian-Muslim divide, it was really tense. Every day I was hearing about coup,” Jonathan recounted.
He noted that there was an unspoken agreement that the presidency, following Olusegun Obasanjo’s eight years in office, would remain in the north for another eight years. Yar’Adua, from Katsina State, had only spent two and a half years in office when his illness disrupted that arrangement.
“But the health issue came up, and that was the problem. And that is why even to allow me to act was an issue,” Jonathan said.
He explained that while he was able to perform some administrative duties, his hands were tied because there had been no formal power transfer, which meant he could not exercise the full powers of the presidency.
“The president of Nigeria has two main responsibilities. First, you are the chief executive, like a prime minister, that the vice president can assume.
“But there was no commander in chief, and there’s nothing like acting commander in chief. You are either a commander in chief or not,” he clarified.
Jonathan said the resulting power vacuum created uncertainty and tension until the National Assembly invoked the doctrine of necessity in February 2010, which empowered him to act as president in Yar’Adua’s absence.
Amid the growing political pressure and threats, Jonathan said he received warnings from friends to vacate the State House for safety reasons due to the risk of assassination.
“Some of my friends came and said, ‘No, you don’t have to sleep here. You have to come and sleep in my guest house,’” Jonathan recalled.
“I said, ‘No. I will stay in the State House. If anybody wants to kill me, it’s better you kill me in the State House so Nigerians will know they assassinated me in the State House.’”
He said he feared that if he was killed outside the villa, it would give room for damaging conspiracy theories.
“If I go and stay in your guest house and people kill me there, they will now say Indian girls brought apples to kill me. And I wouldn’t want that kind of story,” he stated.
The former president’s account sheds new light on the crisis period that eventually led to his emergence as acting president in February 2010 and, later, substantive president following Yar’Adua’s death in May of the same year.
Jonathan’s recollection highlights a critical chapter in Nigeria’s democratic evolution and underscores the personal risks he says he took to uphold constitutional order amid uncertainty and intense political pressure.
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