Ten days after the act, a senior member of Nigeria’s ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has spoken of how incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan wilted under pressure from two powerful international figures and conceded defeat well ahead of the conclusion of collation of results of the March 28 ballot.

“Both Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron repeatedly called President Jonathan to concede defeat before the official announcement (of the poll results) because they had reports that his opponent had already won,” the source, who claimed to have been privy to the phone calls, told The Anadolu Agency.

“That was why the president called Buhari around 5pm on Tuesday to congratulate him,” he said.

As if to give credence to the claim, President-elect Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC) had in his victory speech given “special thanks” to U.S. President Barak Obama for his “timely intervention” for peaceful and credible elections in Africa’s most populous country.

Jonathan had called Buhari to congratulate him at exactly 5:15 p.m. on Monday, March 30. The phone call took place almost ten hours before the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) officially declared Buhari the winner with a total of 15,424,921 votes against 12,853,162 for Jonathan.

Anadolu quoted the PDP source as disclosing that Obama and Cameron had told Jonathan that waiting until the official announcement “may be too late to douse tension or quell possible anger by his supporters.”

“Both men told him it would be far too costly – for Nigeria, Africa and Jonathan himself – to play another Laurent Gbagbo,” the PDP chieftain told AA.

In 2010, Gbagbo rejected the results of presidential polls in Ivory Coast after the election commission declared his rival, Alassane Ouattara, the winner.

The move led to a political crisis in the West African country and more than 3,000 people were killed in the ensuing violence, according to UN data.

Gbagbo’s arrest in April 2011 finally ended the bloody, four-month-long conflict.

“President Jonathan honourably agreed to save the country any further bloodshed,” the PDP source told AA.

The news agency said President Jonathan’s spokesman Reuben Abati did not respond to repeated requests for comment on the story.

•Photo shows Jonathan.

Update news