How To Lose the Presidential Election Four Times (2)

By Femi Aribisala
Get gullible South-West journalists, like Dele Shobowale, to attack and malign anyone who dares to remind Nigerians about the missing $2.8 billion skeleton in your political wardrobe.

APC presidential candidate Muhammadu Buhari’s blueprint for being a serial loser of presidential elections in Nigeria continues as follows:

Be an uneducated presidential candidate

General Muhammadu Buhari

Get your APC supporters to deride Goodluck Jonathan as “clueless,” but to complain when PDP National Secretary, Wale Oladipo, calls you “a semi-literate jackboot.”

Run against Goodluck Jonathan, the most highly-educated president in the history of Nigeria, who has a B.Sc. in Zoology; an M.Sc. in Hydro-biology and Fisheries Biology; and a Ph.D. in Zoology from the University of Port Harcourt; while you, on the other hand, did not even go to university but only as far as Katsina Provisional Secondary School.

Be one of the few senior military officers in the history of the Nigeria to fail the Command and Staff College exams as well as the senior military examinations. While your senior military colleagues, such as Ibrahim Babangida, Tunde Idiagbon, Theophilus Danjuma, Augustus Aikhomu and Abdulsalami Abubakar have military suffixes after their names, such as FSS; Psc; or MNI; have none after yours.

Have no policy program

Have no idea whatsoever of what you would do as president. Mouth anti-corruption platitudes without telling Nigerians how you propose to fight corruption. Fail to appreciate that the president of a democratic government does not have the dictatorial powers you exhibited unscrupulously as military head of state.

Refuse to appear in a public debate with President Obasanjo during the 2003 presidential election for fear of being disgraced. Be ridiculed by another invitation to debate Goodluck Jonathan today because the PDP is confident you will not be up to the task.

Claim: “no right-thinking Nigerian will vote for Jonathan” but show zero understanding of public policy. When asked in an interview on Channels Television how you would grow the Nigerian economy, give the ludicrous response that you would unilaterally stabilize dwindling oil prices; something even OPEC cannot do now.

When Jide Ajani asks you: “Looking at the economy today, what are those things you would point at that are fundamental to making the economy prosperous?” Reply, showing your acute ignorance, by saying: “I am not an economist but with my experience, it is about the indiscipline and lack of probity of the PDP government.”

When he tries to get you to be more forthcoming by asking: “You have spoken in general terms but were you to make a presentation to the business community, what are those things you would be telling them about your economic agenda – in specific terms?” Reply in the most vacuous nonsensical manner possible: “Firstly, let us secure our country. It means anything that comes to this country should be secure, but with people being kidnapped, armed robbery, bombings here and there, bad roads, fraudulent practices, nobody would come in and invest.”

When he still tries to get some substance from you by insisting: “What solutions would you proffer?” Show you have no idea whatsoever by replying: “It is not about telling them what to do which I have as plans but we have to understand how the problem developed? The ruling party must first accept responsibility for the failure of the nation before we can begin to talk about solutions.”

Be known for nonsensical policies

As military head of state, treat Nigerians as school-children through an infantile “War Against Indiscipline.” Force them to queue at bus-stops under the watchful eyes of soldiers wielding whips with orders to flog publicly those deemed unruly. Make civil-servants who come late to work do humiliating frog-jumps. Confuse this charade as cogent public policy.

Be the pioneer of kidnapping in Nigeria by seizing, drugging and crating Umaru Dikko in London, in the failed attempt to ship him forcibly back home. Make a monkey of the Nigerian judicial system by imposing ridiculous 200-year prison sentences on politicians. Put a corrupt president under house arrest, but jail students for 24 years for cheating at exams.

Publicly chastise and humiliate the Ooni of Ife and the Emir of Kano, like a headmaster would his errant school-children, because they went on a private business trip to Israel. Even though Nigerians did not need government permission to visit Israel, seize their passports and place them under travel-bans.

Revert to the ancient stone-age policy of trade by barter referred to as counter-trading. Use it to camouflage the siphoning of Nigeria’s resources abroad to Brazil. Violate ECOWAS protocols by instituting a “Ghana-Must-Go” policy that sought to expel Ghanaians from Nigeria. Impose austerity measures that create widespread job-losses and business closures and lowered the living-standards of Nigerians.

Be involved in $2.8 billion scandal

Claim you are anti-corruption, but under your watch as federal commissioner for petroleum resources, it was discovered that $2.8 billion of Nigeria’s oil money was withdrawn from the NNPC account in London’s Midland Bank and fraudulently deposited in a private BCCI (Bank of Credit and Commerce International) London account where it generated interest amounting to 419 million pounds for private pockets.

BCCI, described by Time Magazine as “the dirtiest bank of all,” turned out to be a rogue bank of international drug-barons and money-launderers owned by a notorious Pakistani; Agha Hassan Abedi. The bank finally collapsed in 1991 after British and American regulators discovered it was involved in widespread money-laundering deals.

The Shagari administration instituted a probe panel, headed by Justice Ayo Irikefe, to get to the bottom of the $2.8 billion scandal. The Senate also instituted its own investigations, headed by majority leader, Olusola Saraki. The Saraki committee’s report was presented to the Senate at the tail-end of the Shagari administration’s first term, with the resolve to address the matter after the 1983 election.

Conduct a coup d’état overthrowing the civilian government before the report could be made public. Bury the Irikefe Report, ensuring that it has never been made public. Intimidate the press into silence by promulgating the infamous Decree 2 which stifled press freedom and threatened prosecution of even those who tell the truth, as long as it is not palatable to you. Send politicians indiscriminately to jail on corruption charges as a way of diverting attention from your own corruption scandal.

Remove the Chief Justice of the Federation and replace him with Justice Ayo Irikefe, the man who headed the probe panel whose report you buried. Also appoint Chike Ofodile, the secretary of the probe panel whose report you buried, as your attorney-general.

Fail to see the hypocrisy in your insistence that the probe report today on NNPC accounts must be published. You say: “In the spirit of the War Against Corruption, we demand the release of the Audit Report of the missing $20billion.” But you buried the Irikefe Report on the missing $2.8 billion. Lai Mohammed, APC publicity secretary, says: “Nigerians will continue to demand that the audit report be made public, in the interest of transparency. The issue will not be swept under the carpet.”

However, you, the APC presidential candidate, rejected transparency by refusing to appear before the Justice Oputa “Truth and Reconciliation Panel” to defend your battered anti-corruption pretensions, suggesting thereby that you have something to hide. Instead, get gullible South-West journalists, like Dele Shobowale, to attack and malign anyone who dares to remind Nigerians about the missing $2.8 billion skeleton in your political wardrobe. Foolishly believe such scurrilous attacks on your critics would make the matter go away.

When Vera Ifudu, an NTA reporter, revealed to Nigerians that Senate Leader, Saraki, told her in an interview that the missing $2.8 billion was moved from the NNPC’s Midland Bank account to a private account; get NTA to dismiss her. However, she sued NTA, won the case, and was awarded financial compensation for wrongful dismissal.

Be an anti-corruption hypocrite

Deceive Nigerians into believing you are a poor man, in spite of the fact that you earn the fat and generous pension of a former head of state from the federal government.

Proclaim yourself an anti-corruption champion but fail to prosecute Alhaji Abubakar Alhaji, a Fulani Prince of the Sokoto Caliphate and ex-Permanent Secretary, federal Ministry of Finance, who lost thousands of pounds of his personal money in a London taxi while on official trip in London; even though Nigerian civil-servants are prohibited from maintaining foreign accounts. Simply post him from the Ministry of Finance to the Ministry of National Planning. Then crown it by appointing him a board-member of the NNPC.

Claim you are against corruption, but surround yourself with corrupt politicians and enter into coalition with corrupt politicians in the APC. Have as one of your key allies, a man who has dubiously appropriated choice land properties in Lagos State, including a local government secretariat.

As military head of state, have a palatial guest-house built in your home-town of Daura. Jail Bisi Akande on corruption charges, and later have him as interim chairman of your so-called anti-corruption APC. Claim your party is anti-corruption; however, the APC minority leader in the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, was convicted for professional misconduct by the Supreme Court of Georgia, U.S.A. in 2006 for defrauding a client of $25,000.

Accuse the PDP of being corrupt, but welcome with open-arms as many PDP members as possible. Accept into your party, men like Murtala Nyako, who was then impeached as governor of Adamawa State on corruption and other charges. Lead a high-powered APC delegation to the Ota home of one of the biggest PDP bigwigs of all, former president Obasanjo, in order to persuade him to come and be “the navigator” of your “anti-corruption” party.

Make a song and dance about being anti-corruption, but readily acquiesce to your party’s demand that a whopping 27.5 million naira fee to be paid by all presidential aspirants of your party; an amount more than that required by the PDP. Tell Nigerians you could not afford the 27.5 million naira. Nevertheless, declare your candidacy lavishly in Eagle Square, Abuja.

Tell Nigerians you took a dubious bank loan of 27.5 million naira in order to pay for your party’s presidential nomination papers. But afterwards it was reported in the papers that it was a former governor that wrote the cheque to your party to pay for you.
(CONTINUED IN TWO MORE PARTS).

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How to lose the presidential election four times (1)

2015: Obasanjo’s Gambit: The agenda for Interim Government

How Goodluck Jonathan  dug deeper in a hole
And the scenario to come

By Jide Ajani

This story examines former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s latest dance steps, a break-dance of twists and turns with one suspected objective: the actualisation of a self-serving agenda that is at variance with the projection of a united Nigeria. Yet, a more perceptive incumbent President would have pulled all the stops to successfully rein-in Obasanjo.

Instead, aides and confidants, who are far, very far, from being adroit at statecraft, continue to mislead President Goodluck Jonathan, as part of a turf battle that is raging inside Aso Rock Presidential Villa. Interestingly, the perceived shoddiness of the Presidency, a Presidency foisted on Nigerians by Obasanjo and which he ought to be working to adequately address, is being allowed to flounder because of self-conceited considerations by political leaders who ought to work at nation-building. Said to be desperately working for a stalemate immediately after February’s presidential election, some political leaders in Nigeria, as this report will show, are going for broke.

YOU ARE ALL MARKED

Sometime last year, Matthew Okikiolakan Aremu Olusegun Obasanjo, at a private meeting with two former aides and a former minister (while they were still hibernating in the All Progressive Congress, APC) implored them to ensure that Goodluck Ebele Jonathan did not return as President in 2015. At a time when the cluelessness of Nigeria’s presidency was manifestly waxing more embarrassing by the day, especially with a First Lady that had become gung ho, Obasanjo’s move appeared altruistic. Nigeria needed to be saved from the Jonathans – or so it seemed.

Chief Olusegun Obasanjo

It was at that meeting that Obasanjo revealed that should Jonathan return next year as President and Commander-in-Chief, those at that meeting would have to go on exile because, according to a source who was in attendance, the former Nigerian leader said, ‘Jonathan would go after all of you here, including me; so you all would have to go on exile.  But I, Obasanjo, would be here. Therefore, he must be stopped’ by whatever means!

During a closed door meeting with the leadership of the APC sometime late last year, Obasanjo admonished it to do whatever it would take to ensure that Jonathan did not return.

Again, Obasanjo, just this month, repeated the same threat of stopping the President in a BBC Hausa Service radio interview.  According to him, Jonathan must be stopped.

I WILL JAIL YOU

Last month, one of the key pillars in the merger that gave birth to the APC re-defected to the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP.  The reason for his movement back to PDP could not be ascertained by Sunday Vanguard at press time. However, Obasanjo is, according to sources, not taking matters lying low. He did not like the idea of his protégé returning to the PDP.

Just a fortnight ago, after the re-defection of the said confidant from the North-east and who is considered very close to Obasanjo, the latter, reportedly, sent two former state governors of South west extraction to the said confidant to convince him on why he should return to the APC.

According to a very dependable source, for two hours, the former governors tried in vain to convince the said confidant.

Undaunted, a telephone call was placed to Obasanjo in Maputo.

It was understood that for almost an hour, the former President also, in vain, tried to convince his erstwhile protégé that he should return to the APC.

Strangely, Obasanjo ended the not-so-pleasant conversation on the note that should the said confidant refuse to return to APC, he, Obasanjo, would jail him.

But the question is where will the former President get the power to jail somebody?

Meanwhile, Obasanjo, whose statements and actions should not be taken lightly, is believed to have his agenda close to his chest.

OBASANJO’S MOVES

An Ebora is likened to a spirit – a strange one – in Yoruba folklore.

For those who know Obasanjo too well, he doesn’t shoot in the dark; and if and when he does, he already knows the spot where his target is.  His comments and statements are almost always weighted not necessarily on sincerity but on forbearance hinged on a self-conceited agenda.

According to Obasanjo, in his much fractured and derided book, My Watch, which Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka, has condemned as a pack of lies, the former President wrote of Jonathan:  ”Jonathan is lacking in broad vision, knowledge, confidence, understanding, concentration, capacity, sense of security, courage, moral and ethical principles, character and passion to move the nation forward on a fast trajectory.”

That was not all. He went on: “Under Jonathan, we seem to have gone from frying pan to fire. If in the past corruption was in the corridors of power, it would seem now to be in the sitting room, dining room and bedroom of power.”

Obasanjo has not said anything new and this would not be the first time he would be taking on a sitting leader.

However, what makes this instance very curious is that it is this self-same Obasanjo who, against an agreement on power rotation which he signed, sealed and delivered on December 22, 2002, in Aso Rock Presidential Villa, urged Jonathan to run for election in 2011.

Diplomatic sources and political leaders across geo-political zones in the country disclosed to Sunday Vanguard that Obasanjo’s agenda is not about saving Nigeria from Jonathan.

In fact, a very authoritative source, who remains very close to Obasanjo but who does not share his beliefs, confided in Sunday Vanguard: “The APC does not understand the game Obasanjo is playing. Obasanjo has committed himself to some northern political leaders and traditional institutions that he would return power to the North in 2015.  It is obvious that Obasanjo is no longer interested in the success of the PDP. But the APC leaders should ask him why he has not openly declared as a member of their party?”

The counterpoise, however, as put forward by Sunday Vanguard, is: How does Obasanjo’s membership of a political party obviate the genuineness of his observations about President Jonathan?

In what was to shock Sunday Vanguard as would shock Nigerians, the source made it clear that Obasanjo’s sudden realization that Jonathan must be stopped is not about Nigeria but about Obasanjo.

AN AGENDA WITHIN AN AGENDA

File photo: Obasanjo and President Jonathan, putting heads together?

According to another source, the only thing that can stop the PDP from running away with victory next year would be an opposition that can match the ruling party.  APC, which was the merger of the Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, with the Congress for Progressive Change, CPC, was meant to address that challenge.

Curiously, the regime of derision that had crisscrossed and dominated the relationship between Obasanjo; APC National Leader, Bola Tinubu; and the APC presidential candidate, Muhammadu Buhari, did not matter any longer.

However, unknown to the APC leadership, sources say Obasanjo’s agenda is “purely to force a stalemate at the polls such that Nigerians will have only one option which is a third way – neither Jonathan nor Buhari,” an interim arrangement or a government of national unity.

The first plank of Obasanjo’s grand design is, according to sources, to overwhelm leaders of the opposition with uncommon support for their cause.  That way, he would be welcomed and seen as part of their party.  That has already been achieved – but Obasanjo has never claimed to be a member of APC.

The second plank, Sunday Vanguard was told, is that Obasanjo himself would overheat the polity with incendiary comments.  He has already started doing that.  Unfortunately, however, the book he wrote, My Watch, is already suffering credibility crisis because in that book, only Obasanjo comes out clean.  But, more significantly, the book is meant to sensitize the international community, rightly or wrongly, to the fact that the Jonathan Presidency is a never-do-well contraption headed by a President who is, at best, confused and, at worst, incompetent.

As part of this plan, sufficient public angst would have a fertile ground on which to germinate and set the stage of massive outpouring of resentment.  Another component of this leg is the drive to engineer discontent in the polity through verifiable and unverifiable claims and counter claims that would further drive the wedge between both leading political parties.

That way, a diplomatic source concluded, “any outcome of the 2015 presidential election would not be acceptable to the losing party”.

The source went on: “But you know what that means for Nigeria once parties refuse to accept the result of an election.  What Obasanjo has succeeded in doing is to help shore up the opposition which is good for democracy; but it is also good for his own agenda which is a return to power.”

The downside, however, is that Obasanjo’s own agenda goes beyond having a strong opposition.

Another source disclosed: “The whole idea of supporting the APC is to force a stalemate at the polls.  Obasanjo does not do anything without his own interest.”

To buttress the point of the former Nigerian leader’s interest, Sunday Vanguard has been told of the existence of the report of a probe into the activities of General Buhari as Petroleum Trust Fund, PTF, Chairman.

The interesting development is that between Obasanjo and the PDP leadership, the details of that report would become public knowledge.  So, why would Obasanjo be interested in leaking the report?  It is for the same reason as “damaging Buhari the way he has written about Jonathan”, an Obasanjo aide who has since fallen out with the former President disclosed.

The Obasanjo former aide added: “Since the first election in 2015 is the presidential election, any unpalatable fallout may make it difficult for subsequent elections to hold.  In the event that that happens, Nigerians should begin to brace for an interim arrangement which is what Obasanjo is working towards. To him, it is either Jonathan is removed or another arrangement is put in place”.

When Obasanjo threatens that he would jail an individual, the question is, how? – he is no longer President. But the scenario, said to be anticipated is that the need to legislate for an interim government would not need too much push as Nigeria’s National Assembly, by February ending, would house a preponderant of legislators whose stake would amount for nothing because they were not re-nominated by their parties for another term.

The dangerous mix of having a stalemate and an assemblage of disgruntled lawmakers would make for a tantalizing cocktail for disaster in a country of clashing socio-political, economic and religious interests.

The international community would wade in and would rather support an interim arrangement than sees a unstable nation.

CONCERN OF LEADERS

As investigations for the scripting of this piece was on-going, Bolaji Akinyemi, a professor, and former Foreign Affairs Minister and who just served as Deputy Chairman, National Conference, 2014, alerted Nigerians on Monday that danger looms.  He sent an open letter to both Jonathan and Buhari, calling on both men to conduct their campaigns with decorum as well as ensure that they abide by the outcome of next year’s presidential election in order not to set Nigeria on fire.  He also called on leaders to intervene and meet with both candidates.

Since Monday when the letter was published, as if driven by a peculiar spirit, both camps have not ceased to tone down their rhetoric of assault.  While the Buhari campaign claimed to tacitly support mutiny, insisting that the military has a right to protest,  Jonathan’s camp has been busy pouring invectives on the person of Buhari.  This is exactly the type of scenario Obasanjo had allegedly envisaged.

Mercifully, a few of those leaders of thought that Akinyemi suggested should meet with both candidates appear to be on the same page with the former minister and erudite scholar.

Sunday Vanguard learnt that a former Secretary General of the Commonwealth, Chief Emeka Anyaoku, agrees totally with the observations of Akinyemi.

In separate interviews with Col. Abubakar Umar, the Caliphate and other prominent Nigerians, they all agreed that Akinyemi had hit the nail on the head.

WHEN OBASANJO SPEAKS

From the Olympian height of nationalism, logging a record in 1979 as the first African military leader to voluntarily hand over power to civilians, Obasanjo has fumbled down the hill with a deafening fall occasioned by his attempt at tenure elongation in 2006.

Perhaps, a more thorough interrogation of the man, Obasanjo, would have revealed a self-conceited individual whose only claim to goodness is opportunistic.

Yet, consider the following:

In 1983, during the deadly days of the post-1983 election violence, Obasanjo took a swipe at the then President Shehu Usman Aliyu Shagari for running a clueless government. Soon after, precisely on December 31, that year, the military struck.

Again in the early second half of 1985, Obasanjo, while delivering a lecture somewhere in the South West, lampooned the General Muhammadu Buhari junta and, barely two months later, Buhari was toppled.

When Obasanjo tried something similar in 1989 against the Ibrahim Babangida administration, attempting to ride on the back of the riots against the Structural Adjustment Programme, SAP, of that government, younger military officers out-shouted Obasanjo.  Whereas Obasanjo, who holds the traditional title of Balogun of Owu, doubling as the Ekerin Egba, had counseled that Babangida’s SAP must have a human face and a milk of human kindness, Navy Captain Okhai Mike Akhigbe charged back on behalf of that government, describing Obasanjo as a frustrated chicken farmer.  That silenced Obasanjo for a while.

It was not until the troubling days of June 12, 1993 presidential election annulment, a time when it would have been expected of Obasanjo to be on the side of decency, common sense and logic, that the former President found his voice in a most ludicrous and egregious manner.  Rather than keep quiet in the face of nothing meaningful and helpful to say, Obasanjo declared that the winner of that election, Bashorun MKO Abiola, was not the messiah Nigerians were waiting for.  That statement further emboldened the military to stay the course and cause of annulment.

In retrospect today, maximum dictator Sani Abacha, by a twist of ironic tragic-comedy, hauled Obasanjo into prison as a way of stopping his serial pranks – the coup tribunal actually ordered Obasanjo kept out for life.  Interestingly, had those administrations Obasanjo criticized found accommodation for his influence, all would have been well in his estimation!

For a traditional man, it takes a strange individual to do what Obasanjo does with relish.  After imposing Umar Musa Yar’Adua on Nigeria, it was the same Obasanjo who railed against the former when his illness became imminently terminal.

And after campaigning for Jonathan to become President in 2011, and when the centre could no longer hold for both men, Obasanjo switched on his atavistic and cantankerous mode.

Make no mistake, it is only a manifestly shambling and shambolic presidency like Jonathan’s that would be a receptacle for all manner of dirt.  And which is why an Obasanjo, with the attendant ills of his administration, would not see anything good about Jonathan, his protégé.

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