BBC Hausa service editor was at the scene when President Goodluck Jonathan called president-elect Muhammadu Buhari to admit defeat in the polls.
He explained that at around 17:00 (16:00GMT) when the votes from all but three states had been declared, Candidate for the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) Muhammadu Buhari, had a big lead over incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan.
This was when it was obvious that Buhari’s lead was unassailable and everyone was wondering about what was going on in the APC camp. Wether they celebrating or still anxiously waiting?
Previous election have been ridiculled with accusations of rigging so everyone was still careful.
Everyone was surprised when People”s Democratic Party agent, Godsday Orubebe disrupted the announcing of election results accusing the Commission chairman Attahiru Jega, of being bias in Abuja
So fears were in the APC camp that the process would be questioned, especially after the passion in which Orubebe had already tried to halt the count.
The editor then proceeded to call Gen Buhari’s circle and find out the mood .
When the call finally got through, they explained to him that Gen Buhari had just received a phone call from his rival, in which the president conceded and congratulated him.
This was quite unimaginable as this election was so fierce that everyone feared that the looser would not accept defeat.
These was the editor’s words…
I was pretty sure that I was the first journalist to get the story so as soon as I got off the phone I alerted the BBC’s election desk and tweeted the details.
Mansur Liman’s twitter message about the call
There were, of course, people who were very concerned about what could happen if the result was contested.
And I have since discovered that members of the National Peace Committee, which is headed by former President Abdulsalami Abubakar, visited President Jonathan as the results were being announced.
I understand they were the ones who persuaded the president to do something to avoid any trouble, and shortly after the visit he made the call.
‘Pick up the phone’
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.
Supporters of the presidential candidate Muhammadu Buhari and his All Progressive Congress with a motorbike during celebrations in Kano
APC celebrations greeted the result but things could have been very different
By making that call the president saved Nigeria a great deal of pain. If the PDP had insisted that they had won the election, and the APC had said the same, the country would have been in chaos.
Lives would have been lost and property would have been destroyed. That call showed that in Nigeria, people can put the country first.
I have heard from PDP supporters that the president took the decision to make the call without consulting anyone. They told me that if he had talked to some of his advisers, they would have objected.
The phone call by Jonathan to Buhari has been praised by the International committee and Buhari himself.
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