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Obasanjo/Atiku Face-Off-: PDP’s Final Burial Ceremony By Senior Fyneface
There is a popular saying in Nigeria that when two elephants fight, the grasses suffer but in the ongoing face-off between the president Chief Olusegun Obasanjo and the vice president Alhaji Atiku Abubakar the fight is taking place in the rocky Aso Villa where there are no grasses. The grass that would definitely suffer because of its abnormal and selfish preference of a rocky terrain for existence will be the self-acclaimed biggest political party in Africa, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
At the onset of the unfolding attrition between the number one and two citizens of the country, obviously, chieftains of the ruling PDP including the President himself must have been erroneously assured that the EFCC was a ready –to- use -weapon of mass destruction against some perceived opponents or rather disloyal members of the party of which Atiku Abubakar occupies the number one position in the President’s ranking.
However, as the events unfold, it is becoming clear that even from the EFCC’s report which prompted the administrative panel against the Vice President both the President and the PDP goofed in strategy and they have to dearly pay for the mistake. But it is good for Nigerians and the nation’s democratic experiment.
Nigerians for the first time are beginning to hear and know how the PDP funded its presidential campaign in 2003. As the politicians are beginning to open up, Nigerians are beginning to know that actually huge sums of money totaling over N200 billion were lodged in dedicated accounts known only to a very few top level PDP chieftains. And it was from these accounts that monies were disbursed for the campaign and all the atrocities committed before and during the 2003 general elections.
The controversial Marine Float Account as it was christened which is said to belong to Otunba Oyewole Fasawe in the report by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and for which a kangaroo panel indicted Vice President Atiku Abubakar in his alleged business relations with Chief Otunba Oyewole Fasawe is actually a PDP presidential campaign account jointly managed by President Olusegun Obasanjo and Vice President Atiku Abubakar. This is the first disclosure and really must have been an embarrassing one to both the President and the PDP.
The second embarrassing disclosure is that the account was maintained to finance campaign activities and was held in trust for Obasanjo/Atiku Campaign Organization by a mutual friend of Vice President Abubakar and President Obasanjo, Otunba Fasawe. Two similar accounts were kept by Chief Emeka Offor and the Late Waziri K. Mohammed.
The question is: Did the EFCC discover this critical information during its investigation into the accounts? From all indications, the commission stumbled into the details of the ownership and operation of the accounts. This may have informed its interrogation of Otunba Fasawe, a friend of both the President and the Vice President and Mr. Bodunde Adeyanju, Personal Assistant to President Obasanjo.
However, in its determination to achieve a pre-determined conclusion to quickly nail the Vice President before the forthcoming mock PDP Convention which has been tentatively slated for early November, the EFCC conveniently ignored the weight and implications of exposing the existence of the dedicated accounts and the activities of the account. Rather the commission tried to link the account to Otunba Fasawe’s loan from the TIB where they alleged that the vice President lodged part of the Petroleum Development Trust Fund (PDTF). This was outrightly a very great mis-calculation by both the President and the PDP.
As events unfolds in the smear campaign by the two first citizens of the country, it has been revealed that the account was maintained to finance the 2003 presidential campaign activities and was held in trust for Obasanjo/Atiku Campaign Organization by a mutual friend of Vice President Abubakar and President Obasanjo, Otunba Fasawe. In addition, Nigerians have been told that two other similar accounts were kept by Chief Emeka Offor and the Late Waziri K. Mohammed for the 2003 elections hatchet jobs.
Did the EFCC from its investigations ever found out that instructions on withdrawals from the accounts for campaign activities were issued jointly by President Obasanjo and Vice President Atiku Abubakar? If the EFCC claims that it did not go into the details of the activities of the account, why did the commission in the first instance questioned Mr Bodunde Adeyanju, a personal assistant to President Obasanjo?
Also, now that the EFCC has more information on the ownership and withdrawals from the said accounts, is the commission going to release another report or provide more information concerning the accounts? These issues have become pertinent because even now, the banking transaction records are in the bank and ascertainable and the EFCC should take steps to clear itself of the current perceived credibility crisis that has beclouded its entire activities since inception.
Now that stronger information are available to the commission; can the EFCC take a very bold step to publish the accounts bank statement for Nigerians to see the names of those who have drawn from the account?
Obviously, the records will reveal names of politicians who have indeed been used over the years to undermine the Vice President. The Vice President definitely could not have been the one funding his adversaries. The list also include names whose familial and communal ties with the Presidency are definitely not with the Vice President even married women who are still in their husbands’ houses who worked as whores throughout the election period. This is shameful in real terms.
How else can someone actually describe the unfolding drama if not to say that the game is becoming dirtier? Even people in other political parties who were paid good monies to destabilize or sabotage their parties, particularly ANPP, AD and APGA have their names clearly manifested in the account statement. Let the EFCC go ahead and publish the statement of this account of course this will not be easy to doctor since the full statement is in the hands of some people who are watching the drama and may even go ahead on their own to publish the statement with or without the EFCC permission.
President Obasanjo must be embarrassed by now on the revelations coming from this campaign accounts. Haba Mr President, even the Governor of Plateau State, Chief Joshua Dariye, who the president is currently trying to crucify as corrupt donated N100 million of Plateau State funds to the Obasanjo/Atiku Campaign Organisation and the President accepted it of course the PDP governors were actually compelled to make such donations to the campaign fund. Is it not shameful?
How can the President and the EFCC now turn around and accuse these governors of being corrupt. Even Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, the ex-governor of Bayelsa State made a donation running into billions to the same Obasanjo 2003 re-election project.
The EFCC actually goofed and should be blamed for the embarrassment the President and the PDP is receiving as fallout from its report. Why on earth should EFCC try to convict the Vice President on the banking transactions of the presidential campaign account jointly managed by the two first citizens of the country and even went ahead to indict the vice president on wrong doings and keeping moot over the president’s involvement?
The EFCC and the President himself must be regretting this shameful approach of trying to thwart the Vice President ambition to contest the 2007 election as a presidential candidate because there could have been other ways (if they have anything against him) of expelling him from the party or denying him the party’s presidential ticket. Based on the EFCC report as the benchmark, the vice president has come out even cleaner from the ongoing controversy than the president and some top PDP chieftains would have wanted Nigerians to believe. With this singular act of blunder, President Obasanjo and the EFCC have technically set the PDP on the journey of its final burial ceremony and the dance would not only be laughable, it would be a naked dance indeed.
SENIOR FYNEFACE WRITES FROM PORT HARCOURT |