L-R Olusegun Adeniyi & Pres Goodluck Jonathan
The author of a new book, ‘Against the Run of Play’, Mr. Segun Adeniyi, has denied reports that former President Goodluck Jonathan denied making comments credited to him in the book.
Adeniyi, who is the Chairman of ThisDay Editorial Board, said this in a statement on Sunday.
Apart from Jonathan, the book, which was presented last Friday, captured the accounts of key figures in the 2015 general elections, including former President Olusegun Obasanjo; a national leader of the All Progressives Congress, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu; and the Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, among others on key national issues.
Jonathan, in a series of tweets on Saturday, however, said the views of many of the respondents were inaccurate and promised to set the records straight in his autobiography.
Jonathan’s words have been interpreted by a section of the social media to mean that the author misquoted him.
Adeniyi’s statement read in part, “The respondents President Jonathan was referring to are the people who spoke to me and whose claims he apparently disputes or disagrees with. This should be clear enough to those who did not choose to read his statement with a tendentious accent.
“But apparently, it is not. President Jonathan did not say I distorted his views and the fact that others may have presented him in ways he doesn’t like cannot be taken as an indictment of me or of my work.”
Explaining the process that went into the publication of the book, Adeniyi said he gave all the respondents fragments of the book in advance so that their words would not be misconstrued.
He added, “For the record, after my first conversation with President Jonathan, I asked for his email address and promised to send him the raw text of our conversation which he could then amend as appropriate. I sent it to him that very day.
“When I went for a second meeting, I took along a printed copy which we both went through line-by-line. Whatever he wanted removed, reworked or rephrased was done while in some areas he provided further context to what he said.
“I went through this same process with former President Olusegun Obasanjo; former Senate President David Mark; APC National Leader, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu; Governor Nasir el-Rufai of Kaduna State; former NGF Chairman and current Transportation Minister, Mr Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi; former Niger State Governor, Dr. Muazu Babangida Aliyu; and a few other principal actors who all have, in their emails, the raw text of our conversations.”
Adeniyi also revealed that computer hackers had obtained soft copies of his book and had started distributing the copies on social media.
Credit Punch
