Goodluck says Well Done

I haven't been following the Nigerian election particularly closely.  I don't have any personal ties to Nigeria over any other African country.  But I've at least looked at the headlines, and today I saw an interesting little story on the BBC about the result.  Goodluck Jonathan, whose name I exploited for a cheap pun in the title, has been president since 2010, and is a member of the People's Democratic Party that has won every election since the end of the military dictatorship in 1999.  Well, every election till the present one, that is.

The mark of a democracy is the willingness of the governing party to step down.  President Jonathan's decision not to contest the result of the election and congratulate his opponent, Muhammadu Buhari, on his victory is a promising sign in this young democracy.  We can only hope it marks the beginning of a trend.

All of which makes the point of the article I linked above somewhat funny!

But even making the call was not straight forward. I heard later that the president could not actually get through to Gen Buhari. He rang all the numbers he had for people in his camp, but no-one answered. It turns out that so many calls were coming through that there was no time to answer them all - and Gen Buhari did not even know where his phone was.

President Jonathan resorted to sending a messenger round to his rival's house to tell him that the president wanted to speak to him. And that he should pick up the phone the next time he tried to call.

Maybe he could have tried Facebook.