Cheers to death: Meet the three African vice presidents who became presidents on a silver platter

Goodluck Jonathan, Nigeria

Plucked from his environmental officer job of the Niger Delta Development Commission in 1999 to appease agitating militants to run as deputy governor of Bayelsa state, Jonathan’s rise was meteoric as it was unplanned.

“He didn’t want to run. He was more interested in consolidating peace, but he felt pressured when the vacancy came,” Guardian quoted his former aide as saying. But run he did after succumbing to intense pressure from his kindred.

The governor of Diepreye Alamieyeseigha was arrested in 2005 in London on money laundering charges in connection with his $3.2 million of ill-gotten wealth that the Metropolitan Police said it found in cash and bank accounts. He jumped bail and escaped back to Nigeria. Having fallen out with his political masters Alamieyeseigha was impeached and eventually jailed two years into his second and final term as governor. 

Jonathan automatically took over as governor. 

When the 2007 Nigerian elections were nearing Umaru Yar’Adua was nominated to lead the PDP into the elections and he needed to be partnered with someone from the Niger Delta. 

According to Quarts, the oil province was restive with “the newly formed Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) was destabilizing the font of the patronage system.”

Jonathan – a political sprat – fitted the bill because other candidates were so mired in corruption that their selection would be the end of the campaign. Jonathan became the vice president after the 2007 elections which were deemed by observers as the most fraudulent in Nigeria’s short democratic dispensation.

When President Yar’Adua, a Muslim northerner, became ill midway through his term in 2009 and died in 2010, Jonathan inherited the top job. In September 2010, he declared his intention to stand in the 2011 presidential election. In the PDP’s January 2011 primaries, Jonathan was elected to be the party’s candidate for the presidency and went ahead to be victorious in the country’s presidential election, held on April 16, 2011. He won about 59 percent of the vote.

In April 2015, Jonathan who was seeking re-election was defeated by former military dictator Muhammadu Buhari.