Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar in
a forthcoming book entitled 'Atiku Media Office: The Wars, The
Victories', alleges that former President Olusegun Obasanjo heavily
enriched himself as Nigeria's President between 1999 to 2007. Atiku who
was Obasanjo’s deputy until the two fell out made a mockery of the much
touted anti-corruption
crusade of his erstwhile boss, Obasanjo.
The book, excerpts of which was
reproduced below, lampooned Obasanjo and his anti-graft war and said:
“It is, however, ironic that the same EFCC (Economic and Financial
Crimes Commission), 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 is 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 blocks; 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.”
However, Atiku claimed in the book
that "it was clear that the President did not want a strong Vice
President or one with a mind of his own."
Really? And yet Atiku was given so much power to control the party, the governors and key sectors of the economy?
Atiku also claimed that he brought
people like Soludo, Okonjo Iwealla, El-rufai and Ribadu into the
government, but now wants us to believe that he was allowed to do all
these by a "petty, impulsive and dictatorial" president?
I am also surprised that the famed
"considerable weight", which Atiku deployed to get Obasanjo re-elected
could not be deployed by Atiku to get himself elected after three
attempts to become president! Let's also not forget that the pack of "15
PDP governors solidly behind Atiku" were all crooks led by the likes of
James Onanefe Ibori, Lucky Igbinedion, Diepriye Alamesiegha, Orji Uzor
Kalu etc. etc. So why would such characters not prefer an Atiku
presidency?
I am also surprised by Atiku's
admission that although the president "released a statement to the
public that Atiku would run for re-election with him, Atiku felt he
could no longer trust his boss". So why did he remain on the ticket?
Power without principles?
Now, Atiku claims that he had to be
"sent on a hastily arranged errand outside the country" before Ogbeh
could be removed as PDP chairman. So where was he sent to when Gemade
and Solomon Lar were removed? I could go on and on to do a review on the
book but I can only sum up by saying that I am severely disappointed
with Atiku's media team who, in spite of their famed invincibility,
cannot produce a coherent argument in trying to rehabilitate their boss.
Excerpts from a new book
titled: Atiku Media Office: The Wars, The Victories written by former
Vice-President Atiku Abubakar's men - as published by THISDAY
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.”52
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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