Excerpts from a new book
titled "Atiku Media Office: The Wars, The Victories" by former
Vice-President Atiku Abubakar's men "It was clear that the President did not want
a strong Vice President or one with a mind of his own. It was also clear by his
decision to build a structure of his own that he had a hidden agenda, which was
then unknown to Atiku.
If indeed they were working as a team, as Obasanjo often
claimed, why would he need his own platform outside the PDP? Even as Obasanjo
frequently declared publicly that the bond between him and his deputy was so
strong that not even their wives could break it, Atiku realised that it was not
going to be easy working with his boss. For reasons best known to him, Obasanjo
felt insecure. He was also petty, impulsive and dictatorial. He believed a lot
in gossips and rumours, and as the Nigerian Nobel-laureate Wole Soyinka once
put it, Obasanjo would always believe and act on the evidence presented by the
first tale-bearer. Atiku was often mindful of outshining his boss and
instructed his staff, especially his media team, to ensure that it never
happened. To the President’s credit, Atiku had a lot to do during their first
term. He was given many responsibilities and he carried them out to the best of
his ability and to the satisfaction of his boss. He worked hard to earn the
confidence of his boss. Sometimes, he went over board to do the President’s
bidding and to prove his loyalty to him. His critics even began to unfairly
ridicule him as a man who had no mind of his own and as a leader who was ready
to sacrifice the interest of his immediate constituency and those of his
friends and political associates to please his boss.
"For a while, everything looked fine until
2002 when the President began to prepare seriously for re-election. The anti-
Atiku forces within the President’s hangers-on and others who felt that Atiku
had become too powerful and was a serious threat to their own presidential
ambitions, began to advise the President against seeking re-election on the
same ticket with Atiku. The Vice President initially dismissed the stories as
mere rumours. But when Obasanjo formally declared his intention to run for a
second four-year term in April 2002, he was mischievously silent on the fate of
his deputy on the re-election ticket.
"Although they later patched things up with
the President directing that a formal statement be released to the public that
Atiku would run for re-election with him, Atiku felt he could no longer trust
his boss. He realised that he had to fight for his own political survival
rather than wait for Obasanjo to humiliate him. Of course, by this time, some
of the same ambitious people who had succeeded in creating a rift between the
President and his deputy had begun urging Atiku to ditch Obasanjo and pursue
his own presidential ambition. Atiku immediately realised their agenda, i.e. to
set the President against his Vice President in the hope that they would emerge
the ultimate beneficiaries, if the two leaders ended up destroying each other.
Atiku played along, but always made sure that he kept the President abreast of
their discussions each time both of them met.
"Just before the PDP presidential primaries in
Abuja, in January 2003, Atiku came under serious pressure from some state
governors to contest the party’s presidential ticket. The governors were
unhappy with Obasanjo’s brusque, crude and dictatorial style and wanted the
more approachable, suave and liberal Atiku to challenge the President. Atiku
mulled over their offer. Finally, he decided that it would not be in the best
interest of the country for the presidency to return to the North after being
in the South for only four years. The South had often accused the North of
monopolising power on account of a revolving door of mostly military officers
from the region who ruled the country for nearly four decades. The Vice
President was fully conscious of such sentiments in the South and he did not
want to precipitate another round of political crisis in the country as a
result of his own personal ambition. Therefore, he decided to throw his
considerable weight behind Obasanjo’s re-election to the disappointment of the
governors who were urging him to run.
"At the outset of their second term in office,
a cold war ensued between the President and his deputy. Atiku had returned to
office after the elections full of hope and optimism about the administration
and the country. His relationship with the President, he had thought, would
improve with time and as the two men had promised each other, they were
determined never to allow a third party to come in between them again. Unknown
to him, Obasanjo had not forgotten or forgiven that his deputy and his
governor-friends had considered challenging him in the party’s presidential
primaries. Never one to let go a slight, Obasanjo began to act like a wounded
lion towards Atiku. He raised the matter over a dozen times and Atiku explained
what happened and asked for forgiveness if the President felt offended in any
way. But Obasanjo remained implacable. He began to undermine the Office of the
Vice President, stripping it steadily of all powers, privileges and functions.
The President made himself the Supreme Commander with powers to hire and fire
any staff of the Vice President. All travels by the Vice President and his
staff had to be approved by him or his designated authority.
"The President also wanted to control such
petty things as allocation of staff vehicles, office and residential
accommodation or determine who should be entitled to lunch at the State House.
Even visitors to the Office of the Vice President had to be screened by the
Chief Security Officer to the President. Things would get even more ludicrous
in the times ahead as Obasanjo took on the micro management of the State House.
Less than two months into the second term, the President told his deputy that
he wanted Adeolu Akande, a Ph.D holder in Political Science and member of
Atiku’s Media Team, fired immediately. Atiku wanted to know what Akande, a
hardworking and respectful former university teacher and journalist, had done
wrong.
"Obasanjo would not say. Atiku would later
find out that the President acted on the basis of a fictitious report by a
former colleague of Akande at the Nigerian Tribune newspapers who was obviously
envious of Akande’s presence and rising profile at the State House. The report
had been commissioned by Bode George, a retired navy commodore and a top shot
in the ruling PDP who reckoned that his survival as a member of the highly
treacherous and dog-eat-dog world of Obasanjo’s hangers-on depended on his
ability to unmask and fight Obasanjo’s ‘enemies.’ He never hid his hatred for
Atiku as a result of a long-cultivated suspicion of Northerners, which he had
carried over from his days in the military. He accused Atiku of trying to
undermine Obasanjo and he offered the fictitious reports he had commissioned as
proof. In the case of Akande, the George report, written by one journalist
reputed to be highly corrupt and unprincipled, said he (Akande) was instigating
or sponsoring attacks on the President in the South West media with which he
was previously associated.
"It was true that in the more organised and
focused Office of the Vice President, Akande had responsibility for coordinating
the media in the South West to ensure better coverage of the Vice President’s
activities at all times. In doing this, Akande knew, as every other member of
the Vice President’s media team, that he also had the responsibility of
defending the President and covering up for the inadequacies of the President’s
media team. Akande visited the region regularly and had a personal relationship
with key figures in the media there. But he never at any time spoke ill of the
President or encouraged the media to criticise Obasanjo. Indeed, anyone
conversant with the workings of the media in Nigeria would know that the media
are not so easily manipulated. It is not an institution that one man would sit
in Abuja and dictate editorial policies and content. Clearly, Akande was being
blamed for the President’s weak media strategy. Obasanjo never believed in or
tried to cultivate a good relationship with the media. He had utter disregard
for journalists and he was always insulting and calling them names. Any sensible
person ought to know that with such a repulsive attitude towards an important
pillar of democracy and society, Obasanjo could not be expected to have a good
image. But it had never been in the character of Obasanjo to recognise and
accept his own mistakes or weaknesses. Someone else had to be blamed for them.
Akande was unmistakably the victim this time around.
"A good leader would have given Akande the
opportunity to defend himself against the damaging allegations in the George
report; but not Obasanjo. Akande had to go, he decreed. Atiku pleaded with him
to investigate the matter thoroughly before taking a decision on the young man.
The President refused to listen. The principle of fair hearing was ignored. For
a President who claimed to be a born-again Christian, the Christian sense of
justice was overlooked. The Yoruba, the tribe to which the president belongs,
also have a traditional way of resolving issues that involve younger ones. That
is why they say, if we use the right hand to spank a child, you use the left to
draw him near. In this matter, the President didn’t act like a father to Akande
who is of the same age as some of his offspring. Akande was fired. Atiku gave
up when he saw that the President would not reverse himself. Akande was advised
to abide; leaving a distraught Atiku with the task of rehabilitating the first
victim of a President’s high-handedness and arrogance. Looking back, some would
argue that Atiku should not have given up so quickly, that he should have
confronted the President and insisted that Obasanjo could not fire his staff.
Atiku was slow to understand that Obasanjo had the mentality of a bully and
that the President would only back off from the systematic assault on the
Office and person of Atiku if he (Atiku) stood up to him. But by running away
from a fight over Akande, the Vice President had only postponed that inevitable
open clash and encouraged Obasanjo to do worse things. Atiku is a bit too
gentle and trusting. He was still full of hope that his relationship with the President
could be managed. He was worried about a prolonged fight with his boss and felt
neither him nor the government would survive a nasty and long drawn out
confrontation. Obasanjo did not care. He was bent on settling scores.
"Barely three months after Akande’s ouster,
Obasanjo struck again. This time the victims were Garba Shehu, Atiku’s Special
Assistant, Media and PR, and Sam Oyovbaire, Atiku’s adviser on Programme and
Policy Monitoring. Shehu, a former president of the Nigerian Guild of Editors and
former managing director of the Kano-based Triumph Group of Newspapers, joined
the Media Team in June 2003. Oyovbaire, a university professor, who had once
served as Information Minister, was also appointed in June 2003. The President
had reluctantly approved of his appointment. He did not seem to trust Oyovbaire
perhaps because of the former minister’s links to Gen. Ibrahim Babangida.
Garba’s problems appeared to have been instigated by some members of the
President’s media team who felt threatened by him. He was accused of sponsoring
damaging stories against the President in both the Northern media as well as in
some foreign broadcast media. Again, no hard evidence was offered and he was
neither queried nor asked to defend himself.
"Obasanjo decreed that Shehu and Oyovbaire had
to go. The President was not going to even inform his deputy about his decision
to sack two of his staff until someone pleaded with him to grant his deputy
that courtesy. Atiku was then on assignment in Jos when Obasanjo called to break
the news to him. Atiku again wanted to know what they had done wrong, but the
President refused to discuss it. He just wanted them gone. Atiku pleaded for
time to look into the matter, Obasanjo refused. Again, Atiku acquiesced. The
Vice President was still trying to avoid an open confrontation with the
President. They were barely into the seventh month of their second term. He
could not risk a long drawn out fight, he thought. Unlike Akande who was
quietly eased out, Shehu and Oyovbaire left in the glare of publicity. The
President ordered his media office to release a formal statement on the sack.
It was a big mistake. The President was pilloried in the media as a tyrant and
as a lawless leader. Questions were asked as to whether the President had power
to sack aides of the Vice President and some even wondered why Atiku would
allow such reckless abuse of power by the President. The 1999 Constitution,
which Obasanjo swore to uphold and respect at all times, is silent on this
issue but it is clear that the rules of engagement did not give the President
powers to sack the Vice President’s aides at will. But the constitution was
Obasanjo’s least concern. He had decided to cut Atiku to size and there was no
going back.
"Atiku suspected that the real reason behind
Obasanjo’s assault on his office was not the claimed bitterness over the 2003
PDP presidential primary. The President had an agenda and the sack of vice
presidential aides was part of the strategy to intimidate and whip Atiku into
line. Shortly after their re-election in 2003, the President sent emissaries to
his deputy to discuss the issue of constitutional amendment, which a committee
headed by Information Minister Jerry Gana was working on. Gana, accompanied by
the Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Kanu Agabi, had included a
controversial clause in their draft report that would give Obasanjo an
unprecedented third term in office. Whilst Atiku had been adjudged by his staff
to have the patience of a doormat, in this instance, he was forced to bare his
teeth in the face of Obasanjo’s shameless excesses. Atiku described the
proposed amendment as unconstitutional and that he would not support such an
illegality.
"He told the President’s men to take the
message back to him. That was the first real confirmation of the rumour that
Obasanjo was scheming for a third term. Besides his own personal ambition,
Atiku knew such a move would be fiercely opposed by critical segments of the
Nigerian society and that it could throw the country into an unnecessary
political crisis. The President refused to personally discuss the matter with
his deputy. As usual with him, Obasanjo pretended not to be interested in it,
making it all seem like the brainwave of some adoring fans in and out of
government.
"The ease with which Obasanjo was demolishing
his once powerful deputy without any serious challenge either from the latter
or any of the power blocs within the polity, had emboldened him to expand the
battle to other “rebel” fronts within his party. He had taken over his
government – well, so to say – he needed to take over the party, which controls
the government and two-thirds of the 36 state governments in the federation as
well as a majority of the National Assembly. The PDP National Chairman, Audu
Ogbeh, did not seem to Obasanjo like a man who would buy into the third term
project. In any case, he had long suspected the chairman of being too close to
Atiku. Although Obasanjo had brought Ogbeh into the party’s highest office, he
had become too uncomfortable with Ogbeh’s independent mind and his articulate,
candid and critical views about the government and the party. Ogbeh once
referred to the riotous and motley collection of the people in the PDP as a
rally rather than a political party. He was also openly critical of the
mounting social problems, such as youth unemployment, despite the fanciful
statistics reeled out daily by the members of the government’s economic team.
Obasanjo bided his time. After all, he had sacked two of Ogbeh’s predecessors –
Solomon Lar and Barnabas Gemade - without protests from the party. The
President was used to having his way.
"The opportunity Obasanjo wanted came sooner
than expected. Ogbeh, a former Minister of Communications and an accomplished
playwright, made the mistake of writing privately to the President, urging him
to do something about his lacklustre performance and the pervading malaise in
the country. The letter somehow found its way to the press and all hell broke
loose. Obasanjo wrote a rambling, un-presidential public response, abusing and
cursing Ogbeh. He then demanded Ogbeh’s resignation. Atiku and a majority of
the state governors as well as other top officials of the party insisted on due
process. They had had enough of the President’s arbitrariness. They wanted the matter
handled in accordance with the provisions of the party’s constitution. Obasanjo
had no patience for such niceties. He sent Atiku on a hastily arranged errand
outside the country and then pounced on Ogbeh. The chairman was dragged from
his house early one morning to the presidential lodge, shoved into a room and
ordered at gun point to draft his resignation on a piece of paper already
provided by the President himself.
"When news of Ogbeh’s forced resignation broke
out, the President was roundly condemned for his lawlessness and reckless abuse
of power. In Obasanjo, Nigerians were beginning to see an all-too-familiar
metamorphosis from “messiah” to menace. The sack of Ogbeh should have been the
moment to put an end to the President’s descent to despotism. There were talks
about splitting the ruling party and threatening the President with impeachment
since his opponents at that time clearly had the numbers in the National
Assembly. Despite having no fewer than 15 PDP governors solidly behind him,
Atiku again showed reluctance to split the party into factions and to rattle
the President with impeachment. He did not want to overheat the polity and give
the ever restive military the excuse to prematurely end Nigeria’s fourth
attempt at representative government. The governors and other top members of
the party, who had lined up behind Atiku, were disappointed. By not challenging
the mounting illegalities of the President, a monster was being created that
was threatening to devour all of them. It was a fatal mistake.
"With Ogbeh gone unchallenged, Obasanjo took
some even bolder steps to purge the party of all Atiku men and women. Obasanjo
imposed Ahmadu Ali, a retired army colonel and medical doctor, who had served
him as Education Minister during his first stint as a military ruler, as
Ogbeh’s replacement. Ali, along with Ojo Maduekwe and Tony Anenih (the two men
had played the same infamous roles in the Abacha dictatorship) and other
Obasanjo men and women, were foisted on the party without an election. This was
clearly a violation of the party’s constitution. Succession in any democratic
institution comes through one form of election or another. By now, it was clear
that Obasanjo was desecrating all the cherished values of democracy and nobody
seemed able to stop him. He intimidated the powerful state governors with
threats of prosecution for corruption by the newly established Economic and
Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). Unfortunately, a number of the governors
had behaved badly during their first term in office. They treated state
treasuries as if they were personal wallets. State funds were regularly being
stolen and stashed abroad for keeps or for the purchase of choice property in
highbrow locations around the world. Obasanjo had dossiers on all of them and
he had also secured the cooperation of the EFCC chairman, Nuhu Ribadu, in
dealing with whomsoever the President decided to single out for punishment.
"The SSS placed Atiku on its priority list.
His movements were monitored round the clock and all his visitors were reported
to Obasanjo. The President would personally rebuke and threaten any minister or
government official seen around the Vice President’s residence or office or who
made the mistake of inviting Atiku to any official function. The President
encouraged his ministers and aides to denigrate and ridicule his deputy. At the
weekly Executive Council of the Federation meeting, some ministers would see
the Vice President without offering a greeting. Atiku took every indignity in
his stride and carried himself around as someone who was above the pettiness of
his tormentors. Having succeeded in putting his men and women in strategic
positions in the party and made himself its de facto leader, Obasanjo fashioned
out a membership review policy.
"All PDP members were to be re-registered and
given new identity cards. The new cards were printed, shipped to the states and
handed over only to Obasanjo’s carefully selected trusted agents known as “Link
men” or “Link women” who had briefs on who to or not give the new cards.
Indeed, the cards went only to those on a list approved by the Presidency and
the PDP headquarters in Abuja, while thousands of prominent members mostly
considered loyal to Atiku were refused re-registration. Some state governors
fought and dispossessed Obasanjo’s agents of the cards, leaving the party with
no other option but to settle with them. Some governors stormed Abuja to
protest their exclusion and Obasanjo made sure that they took an oath of
loyalty to him before being given the cards.
"In the case of Atiku, the cards for Adamawa,
his home State, were handed over to Jibril Aminu, a senator whose election
Atiku had sponsored but who, in a classic case of biting the finger that fed
one, had turned into Atiku’s number one foe. Atiku showed up in his village
ward in Kojoli and was refused registration. By denying the Vice President
registration, it was clear to everyone that contrary to the PDP’s claim, the
exercise was aimed principally at purging the party of those the President did
not like. The entire drama was playing out in the full glare of the Nigerian
public.
"There were condemnations from prominent and
ordinary Nigerians who accused the President and the PDP of perverting the
nation’s democracy. They could not understand how a political party that should
permanently be on new membership drive would be de-registering most of its
founding members without just cause. The President and his party had cast
themselves as villains in this theatre of the absurd. The President’s
unprovoked attacks on Atiku had garnered the latter much public sympathy. Atiku
bore his travails with quiet dignity, refusing to trade insults with the
President. He shunned public comments on his worsening relationship with the
President. In the eyes of the Nigerian public, Atiku was looking more
presidential than Obasanjo. The Vice President carried out whatever was left of
his official assignments without betraying any emotion. His stoicism endeared
him to many Nigerians. He, not Obasanjo, was viewed as the statesman.
"The bad publicity generated by the denial of
registration to the Vice President thoroughly embarrassed the PDP. The party
promptly dispatched its chairman, Ali, and other top officials to the Vice
President’s office for a show registration allegedly to assure him and his
supporters that they were not being chased out of the party. Atiku was not
fooled. Any registration conducted outside a member’s ward was invalid. The PDP
knew it and Atiku knew that he and his supporters had effectively been weeded
out of the ruling party. Some founding members of the PDP had also been
excluded from the party. They would have to create an alternative platform in
order to realise their political ambitions.
"At the peak of Obasanjo’s imperial
presidency, the entire state machinery, personnel, resources and the coercive
instruments of power were forcefully deployed to deny Atiku Abubakar his
fundamental human rights under the constitution with the ultimate aim of
frustrating him out of the 21 April 2007 presidential race. One such coercive
apparatus was the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) headed by
Nuhu Ribadu and manipulated by Obasanjo to get at his perceived political
opponents. Noble as the intention behind the establishment of the
anti-corruption agency was, it unfortunately, turned out to be a veritable
weapon in the hands of Obasanjo against his perceived enemies. By using the
EFCC for the pursuit of vendetta and petrifying contrivances and inanities,
Obasanjo bastardised the very essence of the anti-corruption agency.
"The EFCC was created to deal with the
maelstrom of financial crimes such as Advanced Fee Fraud (aka 419) and economic
crimes perpetrated against the state by public officials. Without a just cause,
the EFCC contrived a case of conspiracy, fraudulent conversion of funds,
corrupt practices and money laundering against the Vice President. The agency
alleged the mismanagement of the Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF),
under the supervision of the Vice-President, for authorising the placement of
deposits in interest-yielding bank accounts. By relying on EFCC’s report, the
Executive Council of the Federation purportedly found him guilty of fraud and
embezzlement after an Administrative Panel, set up by Obasanjo, had indicted
him all with a view to preventing him from contesting the Presidency on
provisions of section 137 (1) of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic
of Nigeria. The section states: “A person shall not be qualified for election
to the office of President if – (a) he has been indicted for embezzlement or
fraud by a judicial commission of inquiry or an administrative panel of inquiry
or a tribunal set up under the Tribunals of Inquiry Act, a tribunals of inquiry
law or any other law by the Federal or state government which indictment has
been accepted by the federal or state government, respectively.”
"The Council hastily approved and gazetted the
“indictments” by the Administrative Panel of Inquiry headed by the Attorney
General of the Federation of Nigeria in its report dated 5th September 2006 in
a bid to satisfy that section of the Constitution which stipulates indictment
by a competent judicial or Administrative panel as a basis for disqualification
from seeking an elective office.
"The EFCC claimed in its report that its
investigations were pursuant to a request for assistance that it received from
the U.S government (a “request” that came after all the investigations of the
EFCC had been carried out). Atiku went to court and on 28 November 2006,
Justice Inumidun Akande of the Lagos High Court ruled that the EFCC report and
the administrative panel report and the consequent gazette of the purported
indictment do not exist in law and in fact. Said Justice Akande, in her
landmark decision: “The preparation of and submission of the report in Exhibit
2 by the 2nd respondent to the President, instead of filing a charge or
information at the High Court against the applicant and other persons, it
erroneously indicted therein, amounting to usurpation by the Executive arm of
government of the power of the High Court or the Judiciary which has power to
try and convict or indict any person found to have committed any offence under
the Act. The report in Exhibit 2, in as much as it is not a charge before the
High Count and the President to whom it was submitted was not the High Court as
prescribed under the Act is ultra vires and shall be set aside in this ruling.
"She warned that judicial power will be eroded
if the Attorney-General or the EFCC and the president “were allowed to get away
with this obvious and dangerous infraction.”
This judicial pronouncement, one of many, in favour
of Atiku Abubakar, showed how the EFCC was used as a tool for settling
political scores by President Obasanjo. It was surmised that a scenario had
already been painted for the agency; all that it did was work towards
accomplishing the scenario. It is, however, ironic that the same EFCC, whose
only allegation against Atiku Abubakar is authorisation of placement of
deposits in interest-yielding bank accounts, failed to see anything wrong or
even curious in a situation where Obasanjo who in 1999 had less than N20,000 in
his bank account managed to acquire several highly mechanised multi-million
naira farms in all the six geo-political zones of the country: Obasanjo palm
oil farms in Calabar; his farm at Oke Ogun area of Oyo State, the biggest of
its kind in Africa; big fish farms in Lanlate and Ota; a big poultry farm in
Ibogun and oil palm and estate at Ehuuagie, Rivers State. As if that was not
enough, Obasanjo’s investments allegedly stretch across all sectors of the
economy with such ventures as the multi-million naira Temperance Hotel, Ota;
The Bells Secondary School and University, Transcorp which owns the Abuja
Hilton, NITEL, oil blocs; Steel Company, as well as a speculated interest in
the Aluminium Smelter Company of Nigeria (ALSCON) in Ikot-Abasi which was
allegedly sold to foreign interests allegedly at a price believed to be far
below its actual value…
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