What is Jibril Aminu’s Next Mission?By Yakubu Abdullahi Yakubu
At the dawn of Nigeria’s Fourth Republic in 1999, Jibril Aminu, a Professor of Medicine and at present a Senator of the Federal Republic, was sent by President Olusegun Obasanjo on a mission to the United States as Ambassador to improve relations between the two countries. The appointment was also a compensation for the failure of the Professor to clinch the Vice Presidential slot to run with General Obasanjo in the February 1999 presidential election.
Between then and now, a lot of water has passed under the bridge. Events went by in the political scene to pop up Prof. Jibril Aminu as a senator in 2003. On his arrival in Nigeria before the general elections, he consulted with Vice President Atiku Abubakar on his aspiration to contest the Adamawa Central Senatorial seat and to seek for support. For sure, with the support of the Vice President and the Adamawa State Governor, Boni Haruna, other contestants were requested to step down and assist Jibril Aminu in fighting ANPP’s candidate for the senate.
During his campaign tour of Adamawa Central zone, Jibril Aminu did more of de-campaigning Atiku Abubakar and Boni Haruna for their re-election then his own election as Senator. It was as if he was on a mission to destroy the Vice President’s and Governor’s political fortunes. Immediately he came into office, Senator Jibril Aminu began a subtle campaign for the 2007 presidential election in favour of his former boss, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida. In an interview with the Vanguard newspaper to mark his birthday in 2004, the Senator mystified his intention by saying he might be making that early campaign for himself rather.
Senator Jibril Aminu’s presidential plan was subdued when President Olusegun Obasanjo began to hearken to the call for a Third Term. Since the President’s deputy was already identified as a threat to the Third Term, Jibril Aminu was sent on another mission, not to the United States but to his home state to disintegrate the political base of Atiku Abubakar. The Senator set out on this mission on the eve of the so-called re-registration or revalidation of PDP members. He was appointed a linkman, a new coinage in the political dictionary, and took over the running of the party from the state chairman, Mr. Joel Madaki and his executive council.
From this vantage point, Senator Aminu de-registered everyone that was (or believed to be) loyal to Vice President Atiku Abubakar, including members of the Adamawa State Executive Council, Local Government Chairmen, legislators, and worse, the Vice President himself who was only re-registered in Aso Villa by the National Chairman of the party in a face-saving measure. Some few months later, the Senator threw more light on his mission during a three-day tour of his senatorial zone. In a speech he declared, “We have recently frustrated them out of PDP. I can assure you we are going to boot them out of the Government House. (Daily Trust, March 14, 2006)
Senator Jibril Aminu has continued beating the war drums in the media granting interviews across the landscape to make castigations against the Vice President and the Governor of Adamawa State at any given opportunity. He recently revealed a deliberate isolation of the Vice President by “his colleagues” in the Federal Government. “We are not getting as much as a non – PDP state, even though we are PDP state. Why? The reason is because Vice President Atiku’s relationship with the Federal Government is so abysmal, nobody (ministers) wants to do any thing in Adamawa, so that he will not be said to be in Atiku’s camp. (The Lawmaker, May 2006).
It was the first time, the people of Adamawa State publicly came to know how they were being roped in by one of their legislators in the Senate. Governor Boni Haruna broke the egg of this intrigue by exposing the terror the Federal Government was unleashing on Adamawa State “by grounding projects such as Yola-Mubi-Michika Road, Mubi-Maiha-Sorau-Belel Road, Yola International Airport project, Jada Dam project, Chouchi Dam project, Gombe-Yola-Jalingo 330KV transmission line etc. (The Scope, May 7-13, 2006).
The mission against Vice President Atiku and Governor Boni, which is the mandate of Jibril Aminu as a linkman for the PDP, is mixing up the political calculations of the Senator. Aminu cried out recently on realizing he was losing his hold on the party machinery in Adamawa State that “in-fighting in our party would hamper our fight against Vice President Atiku Abubakar and Governor Boni Haruna (Daily Trust, May, 17 2006).
The fight against the Vice President and the Governor escalated to a declared war with the shifting of the Third Term bid for President Obasanjo to the National Assembly. Senators Jibril Aminu and Jonathan Zwingina stood out and lobbied for Third Term in the National Assembly. The third Senator from Adamawa, Prof. Iya Abubakar, spoke against it. Among many democrats in the country, Vice President Atiku and Governor Boni waged a frontal war against it because of the opinion that the move was unconstitutional and morally wrong for the tenure of the incumbent President and Governors to be elongated.
Anti-Third Term legislators were encouraged by Nigerians to dare their fellow legislators by Vice President Atiku in a meeting with the 2007 Movement: “More than 90 percent of Nigerians are opposed to this agenda. Who will give you a better automatic ticket than the members of your constituency? Most important, God is also with you. (Daily Trust, April 17, 2006).
The United States Government added its voice to the Third term struggle. “Our view is very clear that executive term limits should be respected in the interest of institutionalizing democracy and opening the political space for new leaders to be groomed and its support for the rule of law. (Daily Trust, May 1, 2006). An intellectual and ABU lecturer, Prof. Ayo Dunmoye said, “to extend tenure is to vitiate the idea of democracy which has a limit to the number of terms an executive can have.” (Daily Trust, May 1, 2006).
Thousands of people, intellectuals, legislators, journalists, lawyers, politicians and several others have contributed their support against the Third Term in different ways. However, Senator Jibril Aminu’s belief in President Obasanjo as the only person fit to rule Nigeria overcame his intellect and his experience of constitutionalism while in the United States as Ambassador. His opinion was that “there are certain things you cannot do in a government (Third term) unless you change the constitution. Unlike the Qur’an, the constitution can change. There is no provision for changing the Qur’an.” (The Lawmaker, May 2006).
Alas, the Third Term project was not only crushed in the National Assembly, but the whole Constitution Amendment Bill was thrown out, which angered Senator Jibril Aminu. He displayed to President Obasanjo his disappointment in his address at the emergency PDP NEC meeting two days later. “Mr. President, we were very disappointed. We should not pretend we were not disappointed. Leaders of the National Assembly are here, they know it is the nation that has lost (from the loss of the Third Term project). I hope they will go back to the bill for the benefit of the people.”(AIT live telecast , May 18, 2006).
In contrast, President Obasanjo capitulated by saying the “decision of the National Assembly to throw out the Constitution Amendment Bill is a victory for democracy. The proponents and opponents of the bill in PDP should be congratulated. We should put the issue behind us, heal the wound of acrimony and march forward.” The New York Times gave “three cheers to the Nigerian parliament for rejecting a constitution change that would have allowed Mr. Obasanjo to run for a third term in 2007. That is how it should be. The move to re-write the constitution for the president to run for another term was a disaster in the making. In line with that opinion, Vice President Atiku stated that “to those who lost the argument, they should see it as a triumph for democracy and a wake-up call to align with the wishes of the electorate.” (Daily Trust, May 17, 2006).
The print media categorized the proponents and opponents of the Third Term as “heroes and villains” respectively. The heroes of democracy included “Atiku Abubakar, Ken Nnamani, Aminu Bello Masari, the media (minus NTA and FRCN), Governors Kure, Boni Haruna; Generals Buhari, Babangida, TY Danjuma and IBM Haruna; Movement 2007, Gambo Jimeta, Audu Ogbeh, Abubakar Rimi, the US Government etc. Under the villain’s column are names such as Olusegun Obasanjo, Bode George, Ahmadu Ali and the PDP, Ibrahim Mantu, Ndidi-Okereke and Corporate Nigeria; Senators Dalhatu Tafida, Jonathan Zwigina, David Mark and Jibril Aminu.” (Leadership, May 21, 2006).
Ujudud Sheriff, a newspaper columnist, predicted last month that if the Third Term plot is defeated at the National Assembly, “a new page will be opened in Nigeria’s history and all political calculations would automatically change.” (Daily Trust, April , 2006). At the funeral prayer of “Mr. Third Term,” the chief mourner, President Obasanjo sued for forgiveness and reconciliation across the membership of the PDP. When the deputy chief mourner, Jibril Aminu’s turn came to speak, he told the NEC members of the PDP that “peace is preferred to crisis and we support every more to reconcile all those things that have happened in the course of the amendment- all the exaggerations, the hyperbole, the blunders etc). However, like an acrobat, the Senator began to sound like a Third Termer again: I am not flattering you, but it is not easy to find somebody like you to run this country. That is God’s truth, whatever any one will say. This country needs you.
That declaration scares one to think what could turn out to be the next mission of Senator Jibril Aminu. He has confessed in a newspaper interview that he “never saw any serious commitment on Obasanjo’s part to pursue the Third Term thing. It was usually the people around him like in the Hausa proverb where someone gets angry on behalf of another. They (third termers) are not sycophants, just ardent loyalists.” (Vanguard, May 26, 2006) “I still see Obasanjo as a prime factor in our future. If you are looking at 2007, the voice of Obasanjo, by the grace of God, will be very important.”
One does not need to be Nostradamus to predict Jibril Aminu’s role as an “ardent loyalist” in the build-up to the 2007 presidential elections. With Jibril Aminu still being the linkman of the PDP in Adamawa State, the intention of Ojo Maduekwe, National Secretary of the PDP, “to re-register those who want to join us and to remove all bottle-necks that will make it impossible for members to be re-registered” may be a facade. “ (Thisday, May, 23, 2006). In the light of this statement, will Jibril Aminu’s role as a bottleneck during the last re-registration exercise of the PDP be re-examined by the PDP national headquarters or is everything a smokescreen?
Willy nilly, Jibril Aminu’s political antecedents will have a significant negative effect on the reconciliation move by the PDP in Adamawa State in particular. Jibril Aminu in his interview with Vanguard (May 26, 2006) agreed that “You don’t get it (in politics) by being dictatorial, you won’t get it. Obasanjo is as powerful as anybody can be, but Third Term did not work out.” If only the Senator will practice what he preaches.
Jibril Aminu’s entry into politics began on a controversial note in April/May 1994. After his national assignment as a two-time minister in the Babangida Administration, he saw an opportunity in the proposed Constitutional Conference by the Sani Abacha Regime to launch himself. It was a rough beginning because the Mahmud Waziri camp presented a popular candidate,- Caleb Tabwassa. Luckily, Atiku Abubakar and his men in the defunct SDP came to his rescue due to his naivety in the political environment. He clinched his constituency seat i.e. Fufore Local Government Area and Song Local Government Areas. His birthplace, Song, was a hard nut to crack because his people were skeptical about his capabilities in politics.
Outside the chambers of the Constitutional Conference, Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, Atiku Abubakar and their political associates formed the Peoples Democratic Movement (PDM), which Jibril Aminu joined but later left when the Sani Abacha Junta began a collision course with the PDM. Jibril Aminu began a political romance with Olusola Saraki who was the Chairman of the Business Committee of the Conference and, by implication, a linkman of the regime in the Conference. When Saraki formed his political association, the Congress for National Consensus (CNC), Jibril Aminu joined him and as a political party, they later endorsed Sani Abacha as their candidate for the presidential election. Back at home, Jibril Aminu refused to endorse the victory of Abdurrahman Bobboi as Chairman at the state congress in preference to Gulkawi who lost three times to the former. That dictatorial tendency drove away many members of the CNC to other parties.
Jibril Aminu’s foray into the new PDP formed during the Abdulsalami regime was more or less controversial. Jibril Aminu was at first aligned with the Mahmud Waziri-led All Peoples Party (APP) and fraternized with Medan Teneke, Bala Takaya and co at the state level. On the eve of the launching of PDP in Abuja, Jibril Aminu jumped ship and joined Atiku Abubakar and other founding members of the G-34 who accepted him wholeheartedly. After the PDP won elections, many of its members who could not get into political office were given appointments. Jibril Aminu was appointed Ambassador to the United States, though his bargain was to be Vice Presidential candidate of the PDP in 1999. It is believed in political circles that the Third Term project was another way of getting Jibril Aminu his long desired dream of the job of Vice President.
The gang-up of the so-called Obasanjo faction in the Adamawa State PDP is falling apart. The Chairman, Joel Madaki and the linkman, Jibril Aminu, are now at daggers-drawn in a power-tussle to take control of the party for their different political ends. Even while drowning, Senator Aminu cried out, “The in-fighting would hamper our fight against Vice President Atiku Abubakar and Governor Boni Haruna by uprooting their political structure. Somebody brought out a knife at our meeting in an attempt to kill the organizing secretary. The Marwa Camp is attempting to hijack the party.” (Daily Trust, May 17, 2006). In a brickbat, the Publicity Secretary (operating as Marwa’s linkman), Musa Kamale, alleges that no one in the Obasanjo faction of Adamawa PDP is yet to receive membership cards since the last re-registration exercise.
With things falling apart for Senator Jibril Aminu, what is his next mission? Who knows? However, the opinion of a newspaper columnist, Abba Mahmood, is ominous. “Since coming to the senate, his (Jibril Aminu) esteem and dignity has been on the decline culminating in his inglorious role for the elongation of the tenure of Obasanjo. It is a pity that such a glorious career like that of Prof. Jibril Aminu will have a bad ending. He went against the wishes of his people, of Vice President Atiku Abubakar, of Gen. IBB (who appointed him minister), of President Shehu Shagari who confirmed him Vice Chancellor of University of Maiduguri, and of Gen. Yakubu Gowon who first brought him out of teaching to be Executive Secretary of Nigerian Universities commission. Allah wa dai naka ya lalace .” (Leadership, May 25, 2006). Boni Haruna has already challenged Senator Aminu to contest election into any office to prove his mettle. Until then the bad ending of the Senator’s career, as Abba Mahmood predicted, may tarry awhile.
Yakubu Abdullahi Yakubu Adamawa State
|