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| Former president Olusegun Obasanjo. |
By Theophilus Abbah, Muideen Olaniyi and Abdulrahman Abubakar,
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo is the benefactor of
President Goodluck Jonathan. But as it is the way of the world, there seems to
be a river between them at the moment. We explore the events that led to this
ugly development and their political implications.
In Abeokuta last Friday, governors, leaders of the
National Assembly and political heavy weights gathered to lay the foundation
stone of a mosque at the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library (OOPL) complex.
Even former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, who has had a bitter political
battle with former President Obasanjo, attended the event and donated N5
million towards the project. Conspicuously absent was President Goodluck
Jonathan. He was not there in person. He was not represented by any minister or
presidential aide.
President Jonathan's absence at an event that touches the
heart of his benefactor is one of the manifestations of the divide between the
two leaders. Obasanjo it was who influenced Jonathan's political rise as Deputy
Governor of Bayelsa State, through Governor, Vice President, Acting President,
substantive President and Jonathan's election as president in the 2011
elections. Though unspoken, the feud is now in the open, like a festering
wound. Obasanjo, on his part, has kept away from the Aso Rock Presidential
Villa in the last few months. He didn't attend the last Council of State
meeting in July. His voice was not heard sympathising or commiserating with the
first family over the illness of Dame Patience Jonathan and the death of
Jonathan's younger brother, the late Meni, respectively. Instead, the volley of
attacks and counter-attacks directly and by proxy has replaced the filial
relationship between them. Obasanjo even dumped his position as chairman of the
Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) board of trustees - a position he fought very
hard to keep. Ever since that decision, things continued to fall apart between
the two.
How Jonathan and Obasanjo fell apart
The crack between Jonathan and Obasanjo began to emerge
shortly after the 2011 presidential election. A close associate of Obasanjo
revealed to Sunday Trust that after the bitter battle before, during and after
the polls, Obasanjo asked Jonathan to mend the divide between the North and
South by visiting those who contested against him in the presidential primaries
and the election. But Jonathan refused to do so. Secondly, it was alleged that
Obasanjo warned Jonathan against reducing the presidency to an Ijaw affair,
when it was apparent that the president had surrounded himself with his
kinsmen, some of them ex-militants. Again, Jonathan ignored him. Then, when
Jonathan wanted to constitute his cabinet, it was gathered, Obasanjo
recommended some names from the South-West, considering the fact that the
region which voted for Jonathan overwhelmingly had no governor. Sunday Trust
gathered that Obasanjo was shocked when Jonathan threw away his list, and the
South-West did not make it to any of the top 10 cabinet positions. Combined
with the suspicion that Jonathan may have deliberately traded the South-West
governorship positions with Asiwaju Bola Tinubu's Action Congress of Nigeria
(ACN) to enable him win the presidential election, Obasanjo felt used and
dumped. To worsen the situation, it was alleged that the president stopped picking
Obasanjo's calls.
Obasanjo turns critic of Jonathan administration
Indications that Obasanjo accepted his maltreatment and
was looking in a different direction, perhaps, to take his pound of flesh,
manifested in reports alleging that he was looking North-ward for Jonathan's
replacement, come 2015. Though he denied ever endorsing Jigawa State Governor
Sule Lamido and Rivers State Governor Rotimi Amaechi as his choices for the
Peoples Democratic Party (PDP's) presidential flag bearers in 2015, Obasanjo's
body language told the world that he had shifted his support from Jonathan. At
local and international fora, he took a swipe on the Jonathan administration
for wasting the country's foreign reserve, put at about $35 billion in 2007.
Obasanjo had said, "We left what we call excess crude, let's build it for
rainy day, up to $35 billion; within three years, the $35 billion disappeared.
Whether the money disappeared or, like the governor said, it was shared, the
fact remains that $35 billion disappeared from the foreign reserve I left
behind in office. When we left that money, we thought we were leaving it for
the rainy day... But my brother said the rain is not falling now. But the fact
is that when the rain is falling, we will have nothing to cover our heads with
because we have blown it off. The Chinese do not think that way." The
statement was an allusion to the Jonathan administration, as both foreign
reserve and excess crude account sank shortly after the 2011 elections.
Obasanjo's statements became more and more critical of
the Jonathan administration. On November 11, he spoke in Dakar, Senegal about
the alarming rate of unemployment in the country, and concluded that the
country was sitting on a time-bomb. He told the gathering at an entrepreneurship
programme under the auspices of that Organisation for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD) and the African Development Bank that when he became
president, youth unemployment was put at 72 per cent, but that he reduced it to
about 52 per cent. Now, it has ballooned to unmanageable proportion. Obasanjo
underscored his fears with this remark: "I am afraid. And when a General
says he is afraid, that means the danger ahead is real and potent. Despite the
imminent threat to Nigeria's nationhood there is no serious, realistic short or
long term solution to youth unemployment."
Though Obasanjo argued that his remarks were not meant to
instigate Nigerians against government, few days after the Dakar event, he was
in Warri, Delta State to frontally attack Jonathan over his 'weak' approach to
insecurity. At the 40th anniversary of Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor's call to
ministry at the Word of Life Bible Church, Obasanjo said, "They (Boko
Haram) stated their grievances and I promised to relay them to the authorities
in power, because that was the best I could do. I did report. But my fear at
that time is still my fear till today. When you have a sore and fail to attend
to it quickly, it festers and grows to become something else.
"Whichever way, you just have to attend to it. Don't
leave it unattended to. On two occasions I had to attend to the problem I faced
at that time. I sent soldiers to a place and 19 of them were killed. If I had
allowed that to continue, I will not have authority to send security whether
police, soldier and any force any where again. So, I had to nip it in the bud
and that was the end of that particular problem."
Referring to criticisms that he foisted Jonathan on the
nation, Obasanjo said, "The beauty of democracy is that power rests in the
people, and every elected person would seek your votes to come back; if you
don't want him, he won't come back."
Jonathan fires back
Obasanjo's reference to how he tackled the Odi crisis
attracted a length remark from Jonathan during the presidential media chat on
Sunday, November 18. The tragedy, which happened on November 20, 1999 led to
the killing of many persons in the Bayelsa State community. Though Obasanjo
said it halted militants' attacks on the army, Jonathan disagreed, bluntly
saying, "When the Odi matter came up, I was the Deputy Governor of Bayelsa
State, and I can give you the narratives of what led to the Odi crisis. The
peak of the activities of the militancy in Niger Delta was when 12 police
officers were killed in a cold blooded murder. That made the federal government
to invade Odi. And after that invasion, the governor and I visited Odi.
Ordinarily, the governor and the deputy governor were not supposed to move
together under such a situation. And we saw some dead people mainly old men and
women and also children. None of those militants was killed. None was killed.
So, bombarding Odi was to solve the problem but it never solved it. If the
attack on Odi had solved the issue of militancy in the Niger Delta, the
Yar'adua government, in which I had the privilege of being the Vice President,
wouldn't have come up with the amnesty programme. So, that should tell you that
the attack on Odi never solved the militancy problems. People will even tell
you that rather it escalated it. It attracted international sympathy and we had
lots of challenges after that attack on Odi."
Former Minister of Aviation under Obasanjo, Chief Femi
Fani-Kayode didn't allow the president's criticism of Obasanjo to go down. He
replied Jonathan in a president statement, which he said, Obasanjo authorised.
Fani-Kayode said, "On the issue of Boko Haram it is unfortunate that
President Obasanjo's comments have been misconstrued and his views
misrepresented. He never said that the Odi treatment should be applied to Boko
Haram or that such action is appropriate in these circumstances. What he said
was that a solution ought to have been found or some sort of action ought to
have been taken sooner rather than allow the problem to fester over time like a
bad wound and get worse. There can be no doubt that he was right on this
because, according to President Jonathan's own Chief of Army Staff, no less that
3,000 people have been killed by Boko Haram in the last two years alone. That
figure represents approximately the same number of people that were killed by
the IRA in Northern Ireland and the British mainland in the 100 years that the
war between them and British lasted and before peace was achieved between the
two sides. The same number of casualties that the IRA inflicted on the people
of the United Kingdom in 100 years is the same number of casualties that Boko
Haram have managed to inflict on our people in just two. This is unacceptable
and it is very disturbing.
The Federal Government must cultivate the courage and the
political will to stop the killings by Boko Haram and to find a permanent
solution to the problem. When President Obasanjo was in power he handled such
matters decisively, with vigour and with the utmost urgency. He brought justice
to the perpetrators quickly and promptly and he did whatever he had to do to
protect the lives and property of the Nigerian people. The truth is that the strategy
that he adopted to fight terrorism and mass murder worked very well and it was
very effective. For President Goodluck Jonathan to suggest otherwise is
regrettable," Fani-Kayode said.
However, the president's reaction to Obasanjo's remarks
didn't end there. Last Tuesday, reports emerged that some indigenes of Odi had
put together enough data to drag Obasanjo to the International Criminal Court
(ICC) over alleged genocide. A report quoted the community as arguing that:
"We are dragging Obasanjo before the International Criminal Court for
crimes against humanity.... Our people are seeking two things, conviction of
the former president for crime against humanity and compensation from the
Federal Government for the destruction of Odi. The details are ready with
pictures but we don't want to pre-empt the International Court."
Obasanjo came under fire from Jonathan's aides and even
former leaders who thought his remarks on Jonathan were some unkind cuts. But
the Jonathan administration didn't stop there. The termination of the
concession agreement on Lagos-Ibadan Expressway between the Federal Government
and Bi-Courtney Highway Services Ltd., whose face is Dr Wale Babalakin, may not
be by chance. Dr Babalakin is like Obasanjo's adopted son.
Apart from terminating the multi-billion naira contract,
the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has taken on Babalakin over
an alleged laundering of N2 billion for convicted former Governor James Ibori.
Secondly, a former Aviation Minister, Chief Femi Fani-Kayode, is at the same
time facing fire. For the fourth time last week, the judges handling the case
of an alleged N240 million corruption charge against him have been changed.
The new judge for the lingering case since 2008 is
Justice Rita Ofili-Ajumogobia. Other associates of Obasanjo, like Malam Nuhu
Ribadu and Malam Nasiru el-Rufai, have not been spared by the administration.
The business empire that Barrister Jimoh Ibrahim, another of Obasanjo
loyalists, attempted to build, is crumbling under government's sledge hammer.
Air Nigeria is off the skies. It is not clear if these are deliberate attempts
to get at Obasanjo, but the quick succession in some of the decisions against
the former president's 'boys' may not be mere coincidences.
Implications of the face-off for 2015:
Obasanjo does not forgive. Obasanjo has always had the
last laugh. These two expressions have become aphorisms in the Nigerian
political circle because of some antecedents. Many politicians who attracted
Obasanjo's anger regretted it.
Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar; former Ogun State
Governor, Otunba Gbenga Daniel; former Speaker Umar Gha'li Na'Abbah, former
Senate President Anyim Pius Anyim; the late Senate President Pius Okadigbo,
former PDP National Chairman, Chief Audu Ogbeh and even the late President
Umaru Musa Yar'adua were not spared. In different ways they disagreed with
Obasanjo.
In different ways they lost out. As the political
alignment for 2015 intensifies, there are fears that the Obasanjo group could
pull the rug off Jonathan's 2015 ambition. In Abeokuta last Friday, many
governors from the North, some of whom have presidential ambition, engaged in a
closed door meeting with Obasanjo after they contributed to the fund for
building the presidential library mosque. If anything, the harmony demonstrated
at the meeting pointed to the reality of power shift from the South to the
North, a change that Obasanjo has openly canvassed for. The big alliance being
planned by the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), the Action Congress of Nigeria
(ACN) and the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) would provide a veritable
alternative to dissenting groups in the PDP, if Jonathan picks the party's
ticket for 2015 presidential election.
Presidential aides declined to make comments on the cold
war between Jonathan and Obasanjo. Many calls put through to Dr Doyin Okupe, a
Senior Special Assistant to Jonathan on Public Affairs, were not answered. He
did not respond to text messages sent to his mobile phone, explaining what this
newspaper wanted him to clarify. Subsequent calls made to Dr Okupe after the
text messages had been delivered were not attended to. Also, Dr Reuben Abati,
the president's Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, did not respond to our
reporter's calls and text messages. The president's Special Assistant on
Political Affairs, Malam Ahmed Gulak, also refused to respond to calls and text
messages to his mobile telephone. However, in his response to criticisms by
former leaders of Jonathan last Friday, Gulak had said, "They have had
their opportunities to rule this country before. Some have done eight years;
some have done 12 years, some have done seven years, they have done their own
bits. Therefore, what we are saying is that, they should be elder statesmen;
give advice from the sides, not to dabble into creating crisis within the
system."
According to Gulak, he agreed that nobody could deprive
people of their rights to air their views on any national issue, including how
they are governed, but such criticisms should be constructive. He argued that
when such criticisms come from those who had been privileged to have led the
country in the past, they should be moderated, not to create social disharmony
in the country.
In his reaction to the face-off between Jonathan and
Obasanjo, the National Publicity Secretary of the Conference of Nigeria
Political Parties (CNPP), Mr Osita Okechukwu, described it as 'nemesis at
work'.
Okechukwu recalled how Obasanjo also treated the likes of
former military leaders, such as Ibrahim Babangida, Abdulsalam Abubakar and T.
Y. Danjuma who worked for his election as civilian president.
He said "if Mr President is actually ready to
transform the country, he must not only detach himself as a puppet in the hands
of the Ota Chief; but must muster the political will to expose the perfidy,
culture of impunity and arbitrariness, which is the metaphor of Obasanjo
regime."
He stated further that "The altercation between
President Goodluck Jonathan and the ex-president Chief Olusegun Obasanjo can
best be termed nemesis at work; for it is the same bowel Chief Obasanjo used in
feeding his mentors who rescued, rehabilitated and enthroned him as president
for the second time, which is being used to feed him. One recalls the petition
we wrote then, pointing out that going by the Decree which governed the 1999
presidential election, that the chief was not qualified to be president. Our
argument was that Chief Obasanjo is an ex-convict, the next day, the then Head
of State, Gen. Abdulsalam Abubakar repealed that section. Or do we forget how
Gen. Ibrahim Babangida coerced everybody to queue into the Obasanjo for
president project, hoping for reward, which never came.
"General T. Y. Danjuma threatened to leave the
country if the chief was not crowned. When he became president, the result was
the revocation of oil block licence allocated earlier to him by General Sani
Abacha. Suffice it to say that the tale of the dosage of ingratitude of Chief
Obasanjo is legendary," Okechukwu said.
The CNPP spokesperson added that "President Jonathan
has been dealing with Chief Obasanjo with kid-gloves and, therefore, must learn
from American dictum, which admonishes that you don't pull the pistol without
shooting. Too bad.
"Where does one start from to mention a few of the
asset-stripping, subversion of the constitution and havoc visited on the
Nigerian people in the eight years of the Obasanjo's regime. His privatization
programme was highly flawed and at variant with the intendment of the exercise.
He embarked on undue patronage of his cronies, and to crown it all, the revenue
realized from the sales is steamed in controversy.
"We cannot as well forget the reckless allocation of
500 hectares of Sirajo District to Nigerian cronies of Chief Obasanjo and some
Malaysians without due process. The hype that greeted the launching of
Malaysian Garden, by Chief Obasanjo hit high roofs upon which a lot the
Nigerians invested and 6 years down the line the controversy has not ebbed."
Also speaking with Sunday Trust on the development,
Daniel Richards, Adamawa State born political strategist, queried the sincerity
of Obasanjo over the choice of his successors.
"If you look at the PDP wholly, we agree that
Obasanjo played a role in Jonathan's emergence. Let's not forget that Obasanjo
too wanted to perpetuate himself through the third term agenda. For me, on the
emergence of Yar'adua and Jonathan, I don't think Obasanjo had good intentions.
And if you look at what characterised Jonathan's emergence, you will find out
that there is a motive behind bringing him as vice president," Richards
said.
The divide between Jonathan and Obasanjo may influence
the country's future political leadership. An intense power struggle may be in
the offing in 2015.
