Jonathan didn’t say I distorted his views in my book —Adeniyi

FORMER presidential spokesman and chairman, Editorial Board, Thisday, Mr Olusegun Adeniyi, on Sunday, said former President Goodluck Jonathan did not condemn his book, “Against the Run of Play,” as reported in the media on Sunday.

Adeniyi, in a statement on Sunday, said the former president only said in his statement released on Saturday that some respondents quoted in the book might have misrepresented certain situations, while he promised to come up with his own account at a later date.

“My attention has just been drawn to an attempt in a section of the social media to credit President Jonathan with what he did not say about my book, in order to discredit me.

“Yesterday (Saturday), President Jonathan said: ‘I have just read Segun Adeniyi’s new book, which has so far enjoyed tremendous reviews in the media. My take on it is that the book, as presented, contains many distorted claims on the 2015 presidential election by many of the respondents. There will obviously be more books like that on this subject by concerned Nigerians.’

“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,” he said.

Adeniyi added the process of getting responses from the former president, as well as Chief Olusegun Obasanjo and former Senate President, David Mark, among others, was painstaking, adding that it was to ensure none of them was either misquoted or misrepresented.

“Therefore, I did not distort President Jonathan’s view and he did not say I did. Now that he has reaffirmed what he told me that he is writing his own account, I will enjoin

Nigerians to wait for his book. I hope others will join him in writing their own accounts so that we can have the complete story of the 2015 presidential election.

“The more accounts and the more perspectives we have, the better for our education and learning. In the same vein, I will also implore all the key actors in the major historical junctures of our national life to document their experiences for the present and for posterity,” he said.

The author, however, said hackers had successfully broken the code of his book and had started circulating it online.